Environmental Protection:

Life cycle assessment of heat and power production based on biomass

Due to society's increased focus on renewable energy production, NVE (Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate) is working to improve insight into the possible environmental consequences of using of different types of energy sources and energy technologies. Ostfold Research will therefore, on assignment from NVE, conduct life cycle assessments for power and heat production based on biomass.

The results from the analyses can be used to compare the environmental profile for power and heat production based on biomass with other relevant energy sources for power generation.

The project will be implemented with the use of recognised methods for life cycle assessments (LCA), which are standardised according to the ISO-14040 series. The LCA calculations themselves will be carried out using the calculation tool SimaPro 7.0.1.

The environmental impact will be calculated for the following categories:

• Green house effect (Carbon dioxide equivalents)
• Acidification (Sulfur dioxide equivalents)
• Eutrophication (Phosphate equivalents)
• Photochemical oxidation potential (smog, ethylene equivalents)
• Energy consumption (net primary use of energy)
• Toxicity (Human- and ecotoxicity)

The results will be presented in total for the different systems and divided into the different processes in the life cycle of the biomass/systems. This will highlight the most prominent environmental impacts and where they occur.

In addition the results will be weighted to show which environmental effects are the most prominent. The weighting will be carried out with the SimaPro tool, using 2-3 selected, internationally accepted weighting methods.