Cargando…

Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts

In response to growing awareness of climate change, requests to establish product carbon footprints have been increasing. Product carbon footprints are life cycle assessments restricted to just one impact category, global warming. Product carbon footprint studies generate life cycle inventory result...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Henriksson, Patrik J. G., Heijungs, Reinout, Dao, Hai M., Phan, Lam T., de Snoo, Geert R., Guinée, Jeroen B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25781175
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121221
_version_ 1782361894004195328
author Henriksson, Patrik J. G.
Heijungs, Reinout
Dao, Hai M.
Phan, Lam T.
de Snoo, Geert R.
Guinée, Jeroen B.
author_facet Henriksson, Patrik J. G.
Heijungs, Reinout
Dao, Hai M.
Phan, Lam T.
de Snoo, Geert R.
Guinée, Jeroen B.
author_sort Henriksson, Patrik J. G.
collection PubMed
description In response to growing awareness of climate change, requests to establish product carbon footprints have been increasing. Product carbon footprints are life cycle assessments restricted to just one impact category, global warming. Product carbon footprint studies generate life cycle inventory results, listing the environmental emissions of greenhouse gases from a product’s lifecycle, and characterize these by their global warming potentials, producing product carbon footprints that are commonly communicated as point values. In the present research we show that the uncertainties surrounding these point values necessitate more sophisticated ways of communicating product carbon footprints, using different sizes of catfish (Pangasius spp.) farms in Vietnam as a case study. As most product carbon footprint studies only have a comparative meaning, we used dependent sampling to produce relative results in order to increase the power for identifying environmentally superior products. We therefore argue that product carbon footprints, supported by quantitative uncertainty estimates, should be used to test hypotheses, rather than to provide point value estimates or plain confidence intervals of products’ environmental performance.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4363321
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2015
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-43633212015-03-23 Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts Henriksson, Patrik J. G. Heijungs, Reinout Dao, Hai M. Phan, Lam T. de Snoo, Geert R. Guinée, Jeroen B. PLoS One Research Article In response to growing awareness of climate change, requests to establish product carbon footprints have been increasing. Product carbon footprints are life cycle assessments restricted to just one impact category, global warming. Product carbon footprint studies generate life cycle inventory results, listing the environmental emissions of greenhouse gases from a product’s lifecycle, and characterize these by their global warming potentials, producing product carbon footprints that are commonly communicated as point values. In the present research we show that the uncertainties surrounding these point values necessitate more sophisticated ways of communicating product carbon footprints, using different sizes of catfish (Pangasius spp.) farms in Vietnam as a case study. As most product carbon footprint studies only have a comparative meaning, we used dependent sampling to produce relative results in order to increase the power for identifying environmentally superior products. We therefore argue that product carbon footprints, supported by quantitative uncertainty estimates, should be used to test hypotheses, rather than to provide point value estimates or plain confidence intervals of products’ environmental performance. Public Library of Science 2015-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4363321/ /pubmed/25781175 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121221 Text en © 2015 Henriksson et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Henriksson, Patrik J. G.
Heijungs, Reinout
Dao, Hai M.
Phan, Lam T.
de Snoo, Geert R.
Guinée, Jeroen B.
Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title_full Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title_fullStr Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title_full_unstemmed Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title_short Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts
title_sort product carbon footprints and their uncertainties in comparative decision contexts
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25781175
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121221
work_keys_str_mv AT henrikssonpatrikjg productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts
AT heijungsreinout productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts
AT daohaim productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts
AT phanlamt productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts
AT desnoogeertr productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts
AT guineejeroenb productcarbonfootprintsandtheiruncertaintiesincomparativedecisioncontexts