Bringing life to life cycle assessments.

• Author: Wenig, Michael M.
• Position: Environmental Law

Two University of Calgary engineers--Drs. Joule Bergerson and David Keith --are gaining attention for their life cycle assessments of Alberta oil sands operations. (1) This attention is well-deserved because their research is encouraging an increasingly holistic approach toward assessing the costs of energy and non-energy developments. This trend is important, but more work is needed to figure out how these kinds of studies can be better integrated into regulatory decisions and government policy-making with respect to oil sands and energy and the environment in general.

As its name implies, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analysis of the costs of a product that considers all stages of the product's existence--from its production (including the raw materials and energy needed for production), use, reuse (if it or its components are recycled), and disposal. Thus, for example, an LCA of emissions from oil sands production looks at emissions occurring not only at an oil sands mine, but also from the upstream generation of the energy used at the mine. It also analyzes emissions from transportation of the produced bitumen, and from bitumen upgrading, refining, and marketing, and consumption of the refined fuel and nonenergy products.

In its most holistic form, an LCA also includes a full-cost accounting at each of the relevant life cycle stages. The term full-cost means that the analysis considers externalities which by definition are costs incurred by the public but that are not reflected in the market prices for produced goods and services. The public costs of environmental impacts often fall within this non-market arena.

By looking at costs from such a cradle to grave standpoint, an LCA provides a comprehensive or complete picture of the product's impacts. This analysis is extremely useful for considerations of the social and commercial utility of a product. It encourages consideration of alternative means of producing a given product or of choices of alternative products that might provide the same function with fewer or lower costs.

Because of their holistic or comprehensive perspective, LCAs are being increasingly recognized as an important tool for reducing energy use and environmental impacts. Thus, for example, Alberta's 2006 "Integrated Energy Vision" (discussed in my Jan./Feb. 2007 LawNow column), states that "[r]esponsible energy development takes a full life cycle approach with a view to a self-sustaining ecosystem" (p. 6). This statement sounds sensible, but what are the actual mechanisms--i.e., tools and processes--for energy developments to "tak[e] a full life cycle approach"? There are several different mechanisms, all of which have merit as well...