The ERA-Net Cofund Blue Bioeconomy (BlueBio) supports the blue bioeconomy in Europe and develops a wider community within the blue bioeconomy sector. In addition to funding calls, BlueBio is looking for synergies between its projects by organizing e-coffee meetings, informal and online meetings by and for BlueBio participants.
The final e-coffee meeting was organized on May 21, 2024 on the topic of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This topic was chosen based on the interest of BlueBio participants, expressed during previous e-coffee meetings. The final e-coffee meeting was organized by Rannis and moderated by Flanders’ FOOD.
Agenda e-coffee
Time: 13:30 – 15:15
- LCA application and challenges: a keynote speech (Olafur Ögmundarson, UI Iceland)
- LCA challenges and results in 5 BlueBio funded projects:
- Biozoostain (Olafur Ögmundarson, UoI Iceland)
- BlueGreenFeed (Olafur Ögmundarson, UoI Iceland)
- PlastiSea (Massimo Pizzol, UoAalborg, Denmark)
- AquaHealth (Massimo Pizzol, UoAalborg, Denmark)
- Sidestream (Massimo Perucca, Project HUB360, Italy)
- Discussion
Partners of BlueBio funders and funded projects were invited. 47 people participated in the meeting.
Olafur Ögmundarson discussed the challenges and gave an example of an application in the Blue biotech industry:
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is defined as the compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. LCA is defined by ISO standard 14040 (14044:2006) with 4 main phases:
- Goal definition
- Scope definition
- Inventory analysis
- Impact assessment.
Details of each phase was given.
Olafur also discussed a cradle-to-cradle system boundaries in biotech; (cradle-to-cradle means that materials of a product are fully reusable in the next life cycle)
LCA is an iterative process that is quite complicated. With the market
demand of greaner and more sustainable products, LCA is now becoming more relevant in policy context within EU. It is also used to endorse products through the Environmental Product Declaration (EDP)
Following Olafur´s keynote speech LCA application in 5 BlueBio funded projects were demonstrated. The challenges per project (e.g. system boundaries, functional unit, product complexity, different impact categories, access to data, uncertainty, etc.) were listed and discussed by the presenters.
The presentations are available here:
Life cycle assessment of multi circular value chains
LCA application and challenges