A novel methodology for the assessment of the direct and indirect impacts associated with the depletion of fossil resources in life cycle assessment

This master's project presents a novel method for assessing the environmental life cycle impacts associated with the depletion of fossil resources based on a functional perspective, aiming to enhance the current state-of-the-art life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology. Fossil resource depletion in life cycle assessment (LCA) accounts for a significant portion of the impacts in the impact category of resource use and current LCIA methods do not address fossil resource depletion satisfactorily.;For this research, existing LCIA methods were analyzed and the key issues to be addressed were identified. A new LCIA framework is subsequently proposed for the direct and indirect impacts associated with the depletion of fossil resources. For direct impacts, at midpoint, the proposed characterization factors represent the amount of fossil resources (in Mega Joules) that is deprived from future users per MJ of a resource that is dissipated. At endpoint, the proposed characterization factors represent the total additional costs (in US Dollars) that the world has to pay as a consequence of the deprivation of a fossil resource from future users per MJ of the resource that is dissipated. The indirect impacts associated with the depletion of fossil resources are defined as the life cycle impacts of the adaptation of the energy market as a consequence of the marginal increase in the price of a fossil resource. The obtained characterization factors are compared with those from previous LCIA methods. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate how the characterization factors are used to calculate the impacts for the users of a certain fossil resource in a certain country.;At midpoint, and endpoint, results demonstrated that regional discrimination had a significant impact on results, improving existing methods by adding regional accuracy. At endpoint, the additional costs due to depletion were found to be different for different fossil resources, improving existing methods that use the same characterization factor for all fossil resources. Taking into account the effect of substitution among fossil resources and among alternative energy sources (nuclear, renewables) according to their application, and taking into account the effect of elasticity between price and demand had a significant influence on endpoint results.;The outcome of this research contributes to the enhancement of state-of-the-art LCIA for fossil resources depletion by differentiating regionally, differentiating between fossil resources, incorporating resource substitutability based on a functional perspective, and accounting for elasticity between the price and consumption of a resource. This methodology will be used in developing the LCIA methodology for fossil resources depletion in IMPACT World+ impact assessment method.