LCA GUIDELINE FOR ASSESSING EFFECT OF GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
REDUCTION IN HYDROGEN SUPPLY CHAIN
Shinya Koda1, Kazuki Shoda1 and Takamichi Ochi2
1Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, 100-8975 Japan 2Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting LLC, 100-6390 Japan
The utilization of hydrogen as an energy carrier is promoted in major countries as one of the effective climate change countermeasures. For the effective use of hydrogen, emissions reduction effect must be evaluated throughout the entire supply chain. The calculation method of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and reduction effect have been standardized by the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (MOEJ). MOEJ has developed the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) Guideline for hydrogen producers, distributors, and end users to evaluate their businesses in Japan. Additionally, the LCA Calculation Tool, manual, and samples were provided and made available on the website of MOEJ.
Keywords: low-carbon hydrogen supply chain, LCA, low-carbon hydrogen society, guideline, tool
INTRODUCTION
Following the Paris Agreement adopted by 196 Parties in December 2015, Japan has formulated the Plan for Global Warming Countermeasures and set out emissions reduction targets. To meet the targets, renewable energy including solar and wind energy, and hydrogen energy such as fuel cel vehicle (FCV) and household fuel cell cogeneration system (Ene-Farm) have drawn attention. The utilization of these enerrgies serve not only as a climate change countermeasure, but also potential contributer to diversification of energy source, job creation, and industry development. Particularly, hydogen has characteristics of storing renewable energy, transporting, and being utilized as a energy carrier (storage quality, portability, and flexibility), thus it’s looked into as the key to energy security and climate change countermeasure to Japan which has limited energy resources
Although the utilization of hydrogen energy is considered effective for climate change due to its emission free characteristic at the usage, it can emit GHGs in the process like production and transportation. Therefore, hydrogen doesn’t necessarily lead to emissions reduction from replaced energy, and evaluating emissions and emissions reduction of the entire life cycle with a LCA would be crucial. LCA is a technique to assess environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of products or services. As such, MOEJ has provided a standardized way of evaluating GHGs reduction effect of the whole hydrogen supply chain including production, storage and transport, and usage, and developed the LCA Guideline for assessing the effect of GHGs reduction in hydrogen supply chain (LCA Guideline).
JAPANESE POLCY TREND OF HYDROGEN AND FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY
In the Plan for Global Warming Countermeasures amended by the Japanese Cabinet on May 13th 2016, a mid-term emissions reduction target, -26% by 2030 from 2013 level, and -80% by 2050 were defined. To achieve
those targets, hydrogen is a promising energy as a contributor to promoting renewable energy as an energy carrier, and to energy saving.
On December 26th, 2017, the Ministerial Council on Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Related Issues held its second meeting and decided on the Basic Hydrogen Strategy to create a world leading hydrogen based society. In this context, MOEJ is carrying out a “Project on Promoting a Society Utilizing Low Carbon Hydrogen”. The project includes 4 types of functions:
i) evaluating and validating GHG reduction effect of low carbon hydrogen supply chain,
ii) demonstrating low carbon hydrogen supply chain, iii) supporting installation of hydrogen stations, and iv) promoting the development of fuel cell industrial
vehicles.
In the evaluation and validation of GHG reduction effect, MOEJ has established the LCA Guideline for hydrogen energy producers, distributors, and end users, so they can evaluate their own hydrogen energy businesses in Japan. For evaluation, the LCA Calculation Tool was developed. This tool is based on two types of LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) databases: process-based database and input-output table based database. In addition, a manual and samples of the tool were provided on the website
DEVELOPING LCA GUIDELINE
As for the development of the LCA Guideline, MOEJ’s previous work, the LCA Guideline about GHG Emissions Reduction Effect of Renewable Energy [1] was taken into consideration. During the development, reliability as a LCA and usability for business operators were taken account of.
As for the reliability as a LCA, reference was made to related international standards and existing quantitative evaluation methods of GHGs. The former includes ISO 14040:2010, ISO 14044:2010, and ISO 14064-2:2006. The latter includes California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
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(LCFS) [2], Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) [3], and FC-HyGuide [4]. Also, Guidelines for Assessing the Contribution of Products to Avoided Greenhouse Gas Emissions [5], and Domestic Credit Scheme and the Offset Credit (J-VER; Japan's verified emissions reduction) Scheme (J-Credit Scheme) [6], were referred to as evaluation methods of GHG reduction effect.
Regarding the usability for business operators, the LCA Calculation Tool was developed as a supporting tool of LCA calculation. The objective is to reduce the calculation burden and errors. This Calculation Tool comprises a database as background data. There are also a manual describing directions of the Calculation Tool, and list of samples explaining detailed cases. The overview of the LCA Guideline, Calculation Tool, and other supporting tools is shown in Figure 1.
Fig. 1. Overview of LCA Guideline and Supporting Tools
OUTLINE OF LCA GUIDELINE Scope of LCA Guideline
The LCA guideline shows how to evaluate GHG reduction of various types of technologies, e.g., fuel cell vehicles (FCV), stationary fuel cells, etc. In the LCA Guideline, GHG reduction by replacing existing energy systems with hydrogen-based technology systems is targeted. As for the calculation scope, GHG emissions, e.g. input energy origin, are expected at the production, transport, storage, and supply, thus the scope of the Guideline is set over the supply chain from production to use. The same scope is applied to the compared existing energy system.
Provision items of LCA Guideline
In the LCA Guideline, provision items were set in accordance with the execution procedure of LCA. Following is the provisions depicted in the Guideline in order: objectives and position of the Guideline, descriptions of the terms used, provision for setting an objective of a LCA, provision for an evaluation scope of the LCA Guideline, provision for collecting and setting the amount of activities needed for an inventory analysis, provision regarding emission factors necessary for calculations of GHG emissions, provision for the calculation method of GHG emissions and reduction effect, and finally a provision for executing a review.
System boundary
The system boundary in the LCA Guideline must be set consistent with the goal of study. In principle, all fuels, electricity, raw materials, capital goods, and disposal processes used in each supply chain stage should be included within the system boundary as shown in Figure 2. However, capital goods in the usage stage can be excluded due to the difficulty of information acquisition.
Fig. 2. System Boundary in Basic Supply Chain Functional Unit
In the case of the evaluation from production to supply, the functional unit is set as 1 MJ of input fuel. However, when the evaluation includes usage stage, the functional unit is set based on the characteristic of equipment at the usage stage. For instance, a functional unit of a stationary fuel cell can be the amount of electricity and heat supplied. Compared system
The compared system is set as a life cycle of a product that would have otherwise occurred in the absence of the evaluating system. The same functional units should be used in both compared system and evaluating system. Table 1 shows the comparison system adopted in the LCA Guideline.
Table 1. Comparison system in the LCA Guideline Equipment in
evaluating system
Function Compared system FCV distance Travel Gasoline cars of equivalent class Household stationary FC Supplied electricity & heat
Elec.: Elec. power system Heat: gas water heater FC bus distance Travel equivalent class Diesel bus of FC forklift Operating time
Fuel type or electric forklift of equivalent
class Allocation
In principle, allocation should be avoided by segmenting processes or expanding system boundaries. If allocation is inevitable, appropriate allocation method is applied and is specified. The allocation methods in the LCA Guideline include heating value allocation, weight allocation, substance amount allocation, and so on.
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Cut-off criteria
When evaluating GHGs in the hydrogen supply chain, in principle, it is desirable to conduct a calculation using alternative data without having cut-off.
Items with the data that are difficult to acquire and with less than 1% of the total GHG emissions up to the supply stage in the hydrogen supply chain may be cut off. However, sensitivity analysis must be conducted for cut-off items, and also, cut-off items must be made clear. LCI databases
Since the result of a LCA depends on LCA databases, the Guideline stipulates priority of databases. The LCA Calculation Tool has IDEA v2 (Inventory Database for Environmental Analysis) [7] and GLIO (Global link input-output) [8] as LCI databases. IDEA v2 is a hybrid inventory database that features both statistical and process-based data. It comprehensively covers nearly all economic activities in Japan, and contains about 3,800 processes that are classified based on the Japan Standard Commodity Classification.
OVERVIEW OF LCA CALCULATION TOOL AND SUPPORTING TOOLS
Supporting Tools
For reducing the burden and improving the accuracy of calculation, the Calculation Tool for Assessing the Effect of GHG Emissions Reduction in Hydrogen Supply Chain (Calculation Tool), its manual, as well as the sample collection of the Calculation Tool were developed and made available on the websie of MOEJ.
i) LCA Calculation Tool
It is designed to allow the calculation that is in line with the LCA Guideline. It consists of three parts: basic information, information regarding production to supply, and information regarding usage. As illustrated in Figure 3, by inputting these parts, it can calculates GHG emissions of not only the entire supply chain, but also that of a specific supply chain stage such as hydrogen production.
Fig. 3. Components of Calculation Tool ii) Sample Collection
It explains in details about the LCA Calculation Tool as well as input data using virtual figures to foster better understanding of the Calculation Tool. As of July 2017, three samples including hydrogen production method,
transportation method, and usage method with different characteristics are available.
LCA CALCULATION EXAMPLE
Figure 4 is an example of the LCA Calculation Tool result. FCV has more GHG reduction effect compared to conventional vehicles. Particularly, when hydrogen from RE (renewable energy such as solar power) is used, reduction effect can be as big as 91%.
Fig. 4. Example of LCA Calculation Tool Result
CONCLUSION
MOEJ has developed the LCA Guideline and LCA Calculation Tool to standardize the evaluation method of GHGs reduction effect of the whole life cycle of hydrogen. The LCA Guideline and LCA Calculation Tools will be revised as needed to keep it updated.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to show our gratitude to the expert committee members, Atsushi Inaba, Hiroyuki Ota, Hiroshi Onoda, Masayuki Kanzaki, Yuki Kudoh, Atsushi Shigemori, Ichiro Daigo, Kiyotaka Tahara, Takumi Nishii, Hiroki Hondo, Kazuhisa Mogi, Yoshikuni Yoshida.
REFERENCES
[1] Ministry of the Environment, Japan (MOEJ) ， LCA Guideline About GHG Emissions Reduction Effect of Renewable Energy ， MOEJ webpage ， retrieved from <http://www.env.go.jp/earth/ondanka/lca/>
[2] California Air Resources Board ， Low Carbon Fuel Standard ， California Air Resources Board webpage ， retrieved from <https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm> [3] EPD International AB，The International EPD System， EPD International AB webpage ， retrieved from <http://www.environdec.com/>
[4] The FC-HyGuide project (2011) ， FC-HyGuide Guidance Document，The FC-Hyduide project webpage,
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retrieved from <http://www.fc-hyguide.eu/guidance-document.html>
[5] The Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan (ILCAJ)， Guidelines for Assessing the Contribution of Products to Avoided Greenhouse Gas Emissions，ILCAJ webpage, retrieved from <https://www.ilcaj.org/lcahp/guideline.php, https://www.ilcaj.org/lcahp/doc/guideline20150224.pdf> [6] MOEJ, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), & Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF)， Domestic Credit Scheme and the Offset Credit (J-VER; Japan's verified emissions reduction) Scheme (J-Credit Scheme) Methodology Development Rules (For emissions reduction projects)，METI J-Credit Scheme webpage， retrieved from <https://japancredit.go.jp/>
[7] National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Research Institute of Science for Safety and Sustainability Society and LCA Research Group & Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry (JEMAI)，LCI Database IDEA version 2.1.3，Tokyo， JEMAI
[8] K. Nansai et al., “Estimates of Embodied Global Energy and Air-Emission Intensities of Japanese Products for Building a Japanese Input–Output Life Cycle Assessment Database with a Global System Boundary”, Environ. Sci. Technol. 46, 16, 9146-9154
