Analyzing the Ecological Debt and Environmental Impact of Taiwan-Made PVC with Spatially Explicit Life Cycle Assessment
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Lin, Ting-Chieh
Abstract
Taiwan is one of the main PVC producer and exporter in the world. In order to inspect the ecological debt of Taiwan made PVC induced by multi-national supply chain and consumption location, this research collects the inventory data from main supply contries of Taiwan-made PVC (cradle to gate) and allocates the domestic/overseas emissions by the ratio of Taiwan-made or imported raw materials. Via the combination of life cycle impact assessment, we could then evaluate the traits of domestic/overseas environmental impacts of Taiwan-made PVC quantitatively. In addition, with the purpose to understand the impact reduction potential via process renewal, electricity & ethylene production were choosen to set several policy scenarios as they are the main impact contributors (hotspots) during the PVC manufacturing process in Taiwan.
In 2008, Taiwan produced 1.38 Mt of PVC, among which 0.79 Mt were directly exported. In the remaining 0.59 Mt of PVC, 0.1 Mt were processed into final products and exported, the other 0.49Mt were the actual PVC demand in Taiwan. Overall, 35% of Taiwan made PVC were used domestically, and 65% of PVC were for exporting purpose.
Based on the LCIA result of baseline year, Taiwan-made PVC contributed 11700 DALYs of human health damage & 5.12 species loss of ecological damage in 2008. Where electricity consumption(48%), other energy consumption(23%), ethylene production(15%), crude oil extraction(11%) are the main contributors in human health damage, where the trends in ecological damage is consistent with human health damage. In terms of human health damage contributions from each impact category, climate change stands for the highest impact(77%), followed by particulate matter formation(13%) and human toxicity(10%). Furthermore, the main substances responsible for environmental damages of PVC measured from cradle to gate are green house gases, in which 91% emitted domestically and mainly from electric generation.
Regarding to the reduction potential of process renewal , CHP renewal from domestic processes (exclude ethylene production) is most prominent with a reduction potential of 15% in human health & 10% in ecological damage compared to baseline. Followed by CPC cracker’s CHP renewal (7% in human health, 8% in ecological damage), CPC cracker renewal (4% in human health, 5% in ecological damage), Formosa cracker’s CHP renewal (3% in human health, 4% in ecological damage). Collectively bring forth to a reduction of 3413 DALYs (29% reduction) and 13.64 species loss (27% reduction).
By integrating domestic/overseas impact assessment and PVC flow analysis, we can then divide the ecological debt into three categories: (1)Domestic impact-Domestic consumption: Taiwan bears 474 DALYs & 0.04 species loss to produce PVC for domestic use (2)Domestic impact-Overseas consumption: Taiwan bears 880 DALYs & & 0.075 species loss to produce PVC for overseas use (3)Overseas impact-Domestic consumption: Other foreign countries bear 439 DALYs & 0.009 species loss to produce raw materials for Taiwan-made PVC which consumpted domestically.
Be worthy of note, global scale impacts like climate change cannot be divided into domestic/overseas impacts, but actually predominant the total human health or ecological damage, reaching 8596 DALYs & 48.686 species loss in baseline year.
Subjects
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
spatial LCI
TRACi Environmental
Supply Chain
Steam Cracker
CHP
Type
thesis
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