Impact assessment sustainability metrics

Biofuel is regarded as a potential substitute to fossil fuel as it is generated from sustainable renewable sources and it can potentially resolve the environmental issues associated with fossil fuel use. Considering the increasing demand on biofuel which concurrently will lead to vast production of biofuel, it is important to perform rigorous assessment on biofuel production technologies to assess their potential impacts in terms of the sustainability performance. Overall, this chapter focuses on safety and health criteria as part of sustainability metrics. 

Given the data challenges discussed previously and the increasing use of streamlined methods, it is necessary to continuously improve the consistency and transparency of the information and the assumptions used in such tools to ensure the quality and the validity of the decisions made with the aid of LGA metrics. The inclusion of quality indicators (such as sensitivity and uncertainty analysis) will continue to be an important step to estimate the uncertainties involved in the inventory and impact models. Finally, there is a need to continuously perform peer review assessments by LGA experts, as the current LGA expertise in pharmaceuticals is very limited. When these requirements are fulfilled, LGA metrics are powerful tools to aid the decision making leading to more sustainable pharmaceutical processes. For further examples of FLASG scores and other LGA analyzes being applied, see Section 10.4.1. 

IChemE metrics of sustainability consist of 49 indicators classified into three main categories economic, environmental and social. The environmental indicators within the IChemE metrics are similar to those in the CWRT metrics. However, there are some differences. The IChemE metrics include the area of land as an environmental indicator. The actual indicators are (i) the sum of directly occupied and affected land per value added and (ii) the rate of land restoration. Other differences relate to the assessment of the relative impacts of pollutants on the environment and human health. The IChemE indicators do not take into account the life-time of chemicals in various media of the environment. The human health indicator is limited to carcinogenic effects and is normalized to benzene. 

Tanzil D, Beloff BR. Assessing impacts overview on sustainability indicators and metrics. Environ Qual Manag 2006. http //dx.doi.org/10.1002/tqem.20101. 

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