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

PARALLEL SESSION 6A: TOOLS AND DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
GHG emissions are economic allocated between milk and meat, and the allocation to nutrients (from manure)
and energy (from destruction of animals) is zero.
Note that the same unallocated inventory data are used for all four switches and only the system boundaries
are changed. This implies that the farm specific data can be entered in the model, and then the results can
easily be presented according to the desired standards mentioned above. Similarly, the results for the Danish
and Swedish baseline can be transformed to be compliant to attributional modelling, IDF or PAS2050 guidelines.
3. Results
The result for Danish baseline milk produced in 2005 is presented in Table 1. The table is divided into
three major parts: 1) direct emissions of CH4 and N2O from the animals and their manure (from housing and
storage). 2) upstream emissions from the production of feed, land use changes, utilisation of manure as organic
fertiliser, fuels and their combustion etc. Note that services and capital goods are included in these
figures. 3) Avoided emissions related to the substituted beef production caused by the supply of meat from
the dairy system.
Table 1. GHG-emissions for 1 kg ECM, Danish baseline 2005. Switch: Consequential (ISO14044). Unit: kg
CO2-eq per kg ECM.
Denmark baseline Dairy cow Raising
480
heifer
Raising newborn
bull
Raising
bull
Total Total
Direct emissions
CH4, enteric fermentation 0.414 0.094 0.00138 0.0380 0.548
CH4, manure handling and storage 0.0697 0.00838 0.000347 0.00764 0.0860
N2O direct 0.0312 0.00605 0.000274 0.00459 0.0422
N2O indirect 0.00524 0.000731 0.0000216 0.000474 0.00647 0.682
Emissions outside the animal activities (incl. capital goods and services)
Feed inputs, excl. ILUC 0.170 0.0388 0.000568 0.0156 0.225
ILUC related to feed 1.47 0.336 0.00492 0.135 1.95
Manure land appl. incl. subst. mineral fert. -0.0353 -0.00125 -0.0000160 -0.00165 -0.0382
Fuels incl. Combustion 0.00994 0.00229 0.000255 0.00175 0.0142
Electricity 0.0369 0 0 0 0.0369
Transport 0.0138 0.00315 0.0000461 0.00127 0.0183
Destruction of fallen cattle incl. subst. energy -0.00314 -0.000530 -0.000269 -0.000414 -0.00435
Farm, capital goods 0.0113 0.0113 0.000580 0.00397 0.0271
Farm, services 0.0149 0.0150 0.000767 0.00525 0.0359 2.26
Substituted beef system (incl. capital goods and services)
Direct emissions (CH4 and N2O) -0.399
Feed inputs, excl. ILUC -0.0324
ILUC related to feed -1.20
Other -0.245 -1.88
Total 1.06
Results with lower degree of completeness
Total (result without ILUC) 0.316
Total (result without ILUC and services) 0.254
Total (result without ILUC, services and capital goods) 0.199
It appears from Table 1, that the most important contributions are ILUC (sum of ILUC from several
crops/grass), avoided beef (sum of contributions from several activities within the beef system), direct emissions
from the animal activities (where enteric fermentation is the most important), and the production of
feedstuff (sum of all feedstuff incl. upstream activities such as diesel for traction, farm capital goods and
services, and production of fertiliser and pesticides).
Transport of materials (mainly feed) to the dairy farms, burning of diesel for traction etc., and electricity
do not contribute significantly to the overall result. Also the inputs of capital goods and services to the milk
system are not major contributors to the overall result. It appears that the land application of manure has a
negative contribution. This is because the avoided emissions from the substituted production of mineral fertilisers
are larger than the direct emissions related to the application of the manure on crops. Also the destruction
of animals is associated with a negative contribution because the by-products from the activity substitutes
energy that alternatively would have been produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
In the lower part of Table 1, the results are shown with lower degrees of completeness. The results without
ILUC are significantly lower than when including ILUC. The results without capital goods and services
show, that the overall result is only affected with approximately 0.117 kg CO2-eq. by the inclusion/exclusion
of capital goods and services.