1. From private to social cost-benefit analysis: life cycle environmental impact cost internalization in cement production fuel switching.
- Author
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Kabakian, Vahakn and McManus, Marcelle
- Subjects
COST benefit analysis ,ENVIRONMENTAL economics ,PRODUCT life cycle assessment ,FUEL switching ,LIFE cycles (Biology) - Abstract
Cement production is linked to heavy environmental load with exigences for reduction and substitution of raw materials and energy demands/sources. Recently, with the potential commercial discovery of natural gas (NG) reserves in Lebanon, discussions on the viability of fuel-switching, from petcoke (kiln processes) and heavy fuel oil (HFO) (reciprocating engines) to NG in the cement sector emerged. To that aim three alternative scenarios (SC
x ) were suggested: shifting petcoke to NG in kiln processes (SC1 ); shifting reciprocating engines from HFO to NG (SC2 ); shifting kiln processes and reciprocating engines to NG (SC3 ). An economic analysis indicated that SC2 is the only viable option. This paper presents a new combination of life cycle impact assessment (LCA) and monetization to quantify environmental impacts for the decision-making processes, within the Lebanese context. The LCA was conducted using primary data and SimaPro v8.5.2.0. The functional unit (FU) was 1 kg of cement. IPCC 2013 GWP 100a V1.03, Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) V1.10 ReCiPe 2016 E v1.02 impact assessment and Stepwise2006 (V1.05.3) monetary valuation methods were used. Results indicated that all scenarios lead to a reduced carbon footprint: 0.016 kgCO2eq. , 0.0008 kgCO2eq. and 0.0168 kgCO2eq. for SC1 , SC2 and SC3 , respectively, from the baseline 1.0327 kgCO2eq. . The baseline CED was 5.06 MJ, and 4.5 MJ, 4.91 MJ and 4.35 MJ for SC1 , SC2 , and SC3 , respectively. SC3 had the lowest environmental burden, followed by SC1 and SC2 . Damage assessment results indicated that all alternative scenarios reduce environmental damage, while SC3 brought the highest benefit followed by SC1 and SC2 , respectively. Monetization results/ FU indicated a cost burden of 25.54 US¢, 24,64 US¢, 25.5 US¢ and 24.6 US¢ for baseline, SC1 , SC2 and SC3 , respectively. Finally, the best fit option, after internalizing the environmental cost, shifted from SC2 to SC3 indicating the merits of combining LCA and monetization into decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2024
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