LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 3A: LAND USE CHANGE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Table 1. GHG emissions from LUC and LU assuming either (i) average global emissions (Vellinga et al.,
2011), (ii) specific conditions for specific products and regions (based on Hörtenhuber et al., 2010, 2011b) or
as (iii) emissions from a land use impact method derived from Müller-Wenk and Brandão (2010).
kg CO2-eq per kg DM feedstuff Austrian barley Certified Brazilian
solvent-extracted
soybean meal
(i) global average LU/LUC emissions
related to grain yields
(ii) regionally and product specified GHG
emissions from LUC
(ii) regionally and product specified GHG
emissions from LU
(iii) land use impact emissions related to
land transformation (LUC)
(iii) land use impact emissions related to
land occupation (LU)
0.246 0.389 0.389
0 1.245 4.150
0.030 0.119 0.119
0 0.380 1.498
0.378 0.988 0.988
Average Braziliansolventextractedsoybean
meal
3. Results
To quantify the impact of LUC-related emissions on overall global warming potential for food and feedstuffs,
emissions from LUC were included into emissions for other categories, such as use of fuels, industrial
processing, production of mineral fertilisers and pesticides as well as direct and indirect N2O emissions from
soil (Hörtenhuber et al., 2011b). This has been done for three different cases, for which results are presented
in Figure 1. Austrian barley, certified Brazilian extracted soybean meal (SBME) and an Austrian national
average of SBME imported mainly from Brazil. Based on that, GHG emissions from land use change are
partially included: (a) does not include any LULUC-related GHG emissions; (b) accounts for LULUCemissions
as derived from average global emissions (Vellinga et al., 2011; see (i) in Table 1); (c) accounts
for product-related LULUC emissions (see (ii) in Table 1); (d) represents emissions from a land use impact
method (Müller-Wenk and Brandão, 2010; see (iii) in Table 1).
Figure 1. Overall GHG emissions for feed ingredients: (a) without any LULUC-related GHG emissions; (b)
LULUC-emissions derived from average global emissions; (c) product-related LULUC emissions: (d) emissions
following a land use impact method.
4. Discussion
In reality, physically occurring carbon fluxes follow a logarithmic function with high initial rates of losses
which are levelling off after a certain number of years after LUC. Although in Figure 1 the case of certified
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