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
The contribution from ILUC includes contributions from transformation of land not in use (primary and
secondary forest) to arable land and from intensification of land already in use. The major contribution is the
one from intensification, where the emissions from additional fertiliser application are the most significant
source of the GHG-emissions.
The GHG emission per kg Swedish ECM is 1.15 kg CO2-eq and is thereby 8% higher than the Danish
milk (Figure 2, first column). The overall results, i.e. the relative magnitude of different contributing activities,
for Swedish milk are not significantly different from the ones for Danish milk in Table 1. The underlying
reasons for the difference between Danish and Swedish milk are described in the following. The direct
emissions are higher for Sweden, because the activity ‘Raising bull’ contributes more in Sweden. The reason
for this is that these animals are kept for longer time and grown bigger before they are slaughtered in Sweden
than in Denmark. The contributions from activities outside the animal activities are higher for Sweden, and
this is also because the bulls grow bigger before they are slaughtered and thereby consume more feed.
Furthermore, the Swedish cows eat relatively less maize ensilage and grain crops and more permanent
grass, which results in higher GHG-emissions. However, carbon sequestration is not included in the model
and including that could result in a lower CF for permanent grass (Doreau and Dollé, 2011). The avoided
emissions in Sweden are higher than in Denmark, which again is related to the higher meat output from the
Swedish milk system.
Fig. 2 shows the GHG emissions per kg Danish and Swedish milk by use of the different switches as explained
previously. The result for ‘Attributional’ (average/allocation) is not significantly different from the
result based on consequential modelling (including ILUC). But it should be noted, that these ‘similar’ results
are more a matter of incident than an indication that similar results can be expected when using consequential
and attributional modelling assumptions. The most important deviation from consequential modelled
results are that economic allocation is used, which implies that only 82% of the emissions and inputs are
ascribed to the milk, and there is no subsituted beef system. Also, ‘ILUC related to feed’ is much lower, because
attributional modelling of ILUC considers all inputs to the market for land (land tenure) as flexible and
a market average mix is applied. There is no substituted beef system.
The modelling assumptions in the IDF and PAS2050 switch mode are to a large extent similar to the average/allocation
attributional switch mode and the results excluding ILUC are rather similar. However, including
emissions from ILUC drastically increase the CF for milk using IDF and PAS2050. The reason for
the high total results for the IDF and PAS2050 switch mode is the contribution from land use changes in soy
cultivation in Brazil (and minor contributions from oil palm in Malaysia). It should be noticed that the way
land use changes are modelled in PAS2050 are direct land use changes (DLUC) and by applying a 20 year
historical amortisation period. This approach is substantially different from the modelling of ILUC which is
applied in the switch modes for ISO14040/44 consequential and average/allocation attributional. DLUC here
only considers impacts from cultivated fields that have been transformed within the recent 20 years. The
results when using the IDF switch mode are slightly higher than the ones of PAS2050. The reason for this is
a higher degree of completeness, i.e. capital goods and services are included.
kg CO2e per kg ECM
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
DK SE DK SE DK SE DK SE
Consequential Attributional IDF PAS2050
Figure 2. GHG emissions from 1 kg ECM for the Danish and Swedish baseline by use of the different
switches.
ILUC
CF excl. ILUC
481