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

GROUP 6, SESSION B: METHODS, TOOLS, DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
157. ACYVIA: creation of a public LCI/LCIA database of the French
food industry
F. Bosque 1 , O.Réthoré 2 , S. Kerner 3 , H. Bortoli 2 , Laura Peano 4 , Sébastien Humbert 4,5 , G. Gaillard 6 , J.
Lansche 6
1 ITERG, rue Monge, 33600 Pessac, France, 2 ADEME, 27 rue Louis Vicat, 75737 Paris Cedex 15, France, 3
IFV, Domaine de l’Espiguette, 30240 Le Grau-du-Roi, France, 4 Quantis, Parc scientifique EPFL, Bât. D –
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, 5 Quantis, 42 boulevard de Sebastopol, 75003 Paris, France, 6 Agroscope
Reckenholz-Tänikon Research Station ART, CH-8046 Zürich, Switzerland, Corresponding author. E-mail:
f.bosque@iterg.com
In the context of the Grenelle laws aiming at an environmental labelling on consumer goods, the ADEME,
the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, has been mandated to set up a national LCI/LCIA
database, in parallel with the development of Product Category Rules by the ADEME/AFNOR platform
(Fig. 1). In terms of format, ADEME’s database is based on the ILCD Dataset format defined by the JRC. In
terms of content, three methods will be used to feed the database. The first and main one relies on the adaptation
of existing processes and on the purchase of the requisite rights from data developers through framework
contracts. For sectors with lacks of data, the ADEME is setting up collaborative projects to develop
sectorial databases that will be merged to ADEME’s database. The third mode will allow third-parties to
propose the integration of isolated supplementary data.
A first three years collaborative project called Agri-BALYSE has been launched in 2010 with INRA, ART,
CIRAD and ten agricultural institutes to develop a public LCI/LCIA database for the main French agricultural
productions as well as some importations (see http://www2.ademe.fr/servlet/KBaseShow?sort=-
1&cid=96&m=3&catid=12908). ACYVIA is a similar project aiming to deal with the next step of the food
supply chain: transformation.
ACYVIA will apply a consistent methodology for the establishment of life cycle inventories of food transformation
processes from the farm gate to the exit gate of the transformation plant. The methods used and the
data format will be in accordance with ISO norms, the ILCD handbook and the general methodology adopted
for the environmental labelling of consumer goods in France (BPX 30-323). The inventory data should allow
the calculation of the indicators identified for environmental labelling, but also of other frequently used LCA
impact categories.
The project will be carried out in collaboration by the following partners:
- ADEME will fund the project and assure its leadership and co-ordination.
- Food technological institutes (wine, spirits, dairy products, fats and oils, baking and pastry, meat industry,
appertised or dehydrated food) will collect representative data and contribute to the methodological
developments and the establishment of the inventories.
- Quantis and ART will lead the methodological developments and the computations of the life cycle
inventories.
ACYVIA will systematically look for a consensus among the concerned experts, not only for the data used to
produce the LCI, but also about major methodological questions such as allocation procedures. This is seen
as a prerequisite for the success of the database: the involvement of interested stakeholders should favour the
broad adoption of ACYVIA across the food chain. ACYVIA’s database will be made of three levels of deliverables,
corresponding to the needs of each partner:
- aggregated and averaged processes for ADEME’s database;
- disaggregated and un-averaged processes to help the technical institutes assessing and lowering the
environmental impacts of their supply chain;
- disaggregated and averaged processes.
This “vertical” construction of the database will be completed by a “horizontal” one consisting in the generation
of “child” processes based on “parent” processes and ensuring a greater level of homogeneity for the
database. For each child process, the values and relative proportions of the parameters of a given parent
process are adapted to fit with the technical, geographical and temporal representativeness of the child process.
For instance, a “parent” process “processing and packaging of milk” can be declined in several “child”
processes specifically constructed to represent the geographical and/or technological specificities of a producer
(e.g. PAST vs. UHT during sterilisation process)
The presentation will show the latest developments and the architecture of the database, the structure of the
collaboration, and the main features of the database, such as:
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