Towards Operationalizing the Planetary Boundaries Concept in LCA for Products CHALLENGES • Additional science is needed to underpin several of the global boundaries • Further consideration required to address regional/local impacts of certain PBs • Approaches for sharing the SOS between sectors, companies, product types, individuals (proportion vs. equal allocation) • Evolution of traditional LCA data and systems; open-source, ‘big-data’, informatics, etc. Richard J. Murphy 1 , Julie Clavreul 2 , Sarah Sim 2 , Henry King 2 , Ian Christie 1 , Jonathan Chenoweth 1 , Jaquetta Lee 1 , Roland Clift 1 1 Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK 2 Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC), Unilever, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook, UK REFERENCES Rockström, J et al (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461: 472-475 Steffen, W. et al (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223) Nykvist B, et al (2013). National Environmental Performance on Planetary Boundaries - A study for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Report 6573, June 2013. CDP website https://www.cdp.net/en- US/Pages/HomePage.aspx ALLOCATING THE SOS TO INDUSTRIAL SECTORS • The CDP approach allocates the SOS to industrial sectors proportionally on the basis of their current emissions intensity PB P cropland annual reduction need for SOS 2050 0.229 Tg P yr Plastics all 0.007 Tg P yr Wheat grain 0.162 Tg P yr Chrome steel 0.002 Tg P yr Diesel fuel prodn. only … 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Annual P cropland flow for SOS2 050 % Estimated annual P emissions from global production of example materials in comparison with Annual reduction needed for PB Biogeochemical flow (P) to attain SOS2050 PB annual Climate Change allowance for SOS 2050 1.1 Gt CO2e Plastics 0.76 Gt CO2e Wheat grain 0.40 Gt CO2e Chrome steel 0.14 Gt CO2e Diesel fuel prodn. only 0.63 Gt CO2e 0 20 40 60 80 100 Annual CO2e emission as % of SOS 2050 Estimated annual GHG emissions from global production of example materials in comparison with Annual reduction needed for GHG emissions to attain SOS 2050 Steffen et al. (2015) SIGNIFICANCE • The Planetary Boundaries (PB) concept enables a switch of mind-sets from relative to ‘absolute environmental sustainability’ • The ‘Safe Operating Space’ (SOS) presents a context for transformative innovation. It has clear relevance for developing a ‘distance to target’ approach based on LCA • Traditional LCA is already applied in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector. We explore the possibility of configuring the framework of LCA around the nine Planetary Boundaries CONTEXTUALISING THE CHALLENGE • Here we illustrate a “distance-to-target” approach for two PBs: Climate Change and Biogeochemical flows of Phosphorous • The likely boundary of the climate change category suggests a drop in global GHG emissions from ca. 52 Gt CO 2 e /yr to ca. 14 Gt CO 2 e /yr by 2050. Applying this reduction linearly from 2015 to 2050 yields a global annual reduction value of 1.1Gt CO 2 e/yr to remain within the SOS 2050 • A similar approach for the phosphorus boundary (croplands) yields an annual reduction value of 0.229 Tg P /yr to meet SOS 2050 • Several individual activities on their own (e.g. plastics, wheat grain) account for very large proportions of the total global ‘annual’ reduction needed ALLOCATING THE SOS TO INDIVIDUALS • The method developed by Nykvist et al. (2013) downscales planetary-level values to per-capita impact and to national boundaries Climate change per capita boundary performance in 2008 (Nykvist et al. 2013)