Integration of regional socio-economic LCA and environmental LCA for the assessment of industrial bioeconomy networks

This work presents the socio-economic and environmental life cycle evaluation ofalternative defossilization pathways for a bio-based industrial network in the Central Germanyregion. The pathways were defined considering the potential energy utilization of regionally availablebiomass residual streams. The evaluation has been made using an integrated approach, i.e.using a traditional life cycle assessment methodology, complemented by a regionalized socioeconomiclife cycle assessment, utilizing the “RESPONSA” framework developed at UFZ. It hasbeen shown that the environmental advantages of the defossilization of the value chain add upto 5% of the reduction of the overall impacts, which was somehow expected due to the alreadyexisting integration and optimization in the value chain. The socio-economic results, however,show that the path to defossilization can provide a clear enhancement of the regional socio-economic impacts, which can be of great value to the bioeconomy sector.