Organic materials for construction: questioning the concept of feedstock energy

Author(s): A. Ventura and N. Santero
Paper category: symposium
Book title: International Symposium on Life Cycle Assessment and Construction – Civil engineering and buildings
Editor(s): A. Ventura and C. de la Roche
Print ISBN: 978-2-35158-127-8
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-128-5
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Pages: 360 – 368
Total Pages: 9
Language: English

Abstract: Among the various materials used in the construction sector, consumption of organic materials have a large influence on energy accounting due to their inherent energy content, known as feedstock energy. Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards require that this quantity be reported in the inventory table as consumed energy. The fact that feedstock energy is considered alongside energy stocks and losses may be intuitively necessary, but there are unresolved concepts related to this issue that need further exploration.
This paper aims at re-exploring the way that feedstock energy is handled in LCAs and proposes a new framework. A review of various kinds of energies and their underlying notions is presented and exposes the reasons for ambiguous meanings in the LCA method in order to evaluate the feedstock problem. This analysis shows that resource consumption indicators, inventory flows, and efficiency concepts are all confounded in the same primary energy concept. Furthermore, whereas energy stocks are currently accounted, the consequential combustion emissions are never considered.
From these various observations, a new frame is proposed, individually considering energy resource depletion indicators, energy flows, and energy efficiency, as well as accounting for emission stocks using the so-called stock inventory table.

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), allocation, end of life, stock inventory

Online publication: 2012
Publication Type: full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00