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

PARALLEL SESSION 7C: FOOD CHAIN AND FOOD WASTE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
3. Results
3.1. Differences between products and market shares
The results show that individual products have a wide range of embedded energy values which range
from 2 MJ/kg for mineral water to 83 MJ/kg for coffee (Table 1). Annual embedded energy values for total
product consumption range from 67 TJ for honey to 36,498 TJ for beef.
Fruit and vegetables have the lowest embedded energy values, for example, potato (2.4 MJ/kg), onion
(2.9 MJ/kg) and carrot (3.3 MJ/kg). Domestic fruits such as apples (5 MJ/kg) and raspberries (7.5 MJ/kg)
require less energy than imported fruit: oranges (8.1 MJ/kg), bananas (8.7 MJ/kg) and grapes (8.8 MJ/kg).
There are two exceptions to this: UK strawberries (13.6 MJ/kg) are grown in polytunnels and UK tomatoes
(95 MJ/kg) in heated glasshouses. Tomatoes have a wide range of energy requirements which illustrates different
production systems (field grown in Mediterranean countries and glasshouse grown in Northern European
countries).
A number of dairy products were covered in the analysis. Liquid milk has the lowest embedded energy
value (7.3 MJ/kg) but this increases with added processing: cream (12.1 MJ/kg), yoghurt (19.4 MJ/kg) and
butter (23.5 MJ/kg) have values corresponding to 166%, 266% and 322%, respectively, of the value for milk.
Of the dairy products, cheese (48.8 MJ/kg) has the highest value.
Meat is an energy intensive product with most types having similar average values: pork (33.3 MJ/kg),
beef (34.4 MJ/kg) and chicken (39.7 MJ/kg) although the range of values for an individual product can be
large and dependent on different production systems, e.g. beef (17.0 to 74.2 MJ/kg). It is interesting to note
that these values are smaller than those for different fish species: tinned tuna (44.0 MJ/kg), salmon (57
MJ/kg) and frozen cod (61.9 MJ/kg). However, when total market share is considered, the energy requirement
for fish is considerably lower than that of meat. Frozen cod and salmon require 1,581 and 1,819
TJ/year, respectively, compared to chicken and beef that require 23,190 and 36,498 TJ/kg, respectively.
The same product can have different energy requirements depending upon its processing or packaging, for
example, there is a 7% difference between fresh peas and tinned peas, due to differences in the processing
and logistics stages.
The review revealed that there is a lack of data on processed multi-ingredient products; this omission was
rectified by undertaking new research on pasta sauce, soup, pizza and chocolate biscuits. These four products
have different energy uses but do not figure as the most energy-intensive of the table below. Vegetable soup
is the least energy-intensive product of the sub-group (8.92 MJ/kg) and restaurant pizza requires the most
energy (28 MJ/kg).
Table 1. Embedded energy by product and market share
Product
Average product
energy use
(MJ/kg)
Average product
energy use ranking
Range of product
energy use
(MJ/kg)
Market energy
use (TJ)
Market energy
use ranking
Apple 5.0 49 2.5 – 11.1 2,585 28
Banana 8.7 42 5.4 – 12.0 6,082 18
Bean (tinned) 18.0 22 16.0 – 20.0 6,205 17
Beef 34.4 9 17.0 – 74.2 36,498 1
Biscuit 25.4 13 23.0 – 27.2 13,296 7
Bread 9.0 39 3.7 – 15.8 18,931 5
Broccoli (fresh) 11.1 34 10.7 – 11.4 877 41
Butter 23.5 15 12.6 – 30.7 3,000 25
Cabbage (white) 4.4 50 3.7 – 5.1 548 45
Cake 16.8 24 11.6 – 21.0 8,151 15
Carrot (fresh) 3.3 53 2.6 – 4.1 2,468 29
Cereal & muesli 13.5 30 10.8 – 17.0 5,602 20
Cheese 48.8 4 35.7 – 65.0 18,175 6
Chicken 24.9 8 20.6 – 29.2 23,190 4
Chips (oven) 10.2 35 - - -
Chocolate 43.5 7 43.0 – 44.0 12,219 9
Chocolate biscuits 19.5 20 - - -
Cod (frozen) 61.9 2 45.0 – 78.8 1,581 33
Coffee 83.0 1 42.1 – 126.4 4,504 21
Cream 12.1 32 5.1 – 19.0 811 42
Crispbread 20.6 19 14.0 – 27.2 395 46
Crisps (baked) 8.7 43 - - -
Crisps (fried) 14.6 27 - - -
Eggs 29.2 11 27.2 – 31.3 9,320 12
Flour
638
3.6 51 1.7 – 5.2 724 44