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Communicating Life-Cycle Assessment Results: A Comparison of Vehicle Alternatives in Portugal

Proceedings article published in 2013 by Ana Rita Domingues, Pedro Marques, Rita Garcia, Fausto Freire, Luís Dias
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

A variety of alternative vehicle technologies are emerging, leading to a diversification on consumer choice and the need to assess their environmental impacts. This paper aims to compare vehicle alternatives through a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), proposing relevant Normalisation References (NR) as a way of communicating LCA results. Six compact passenger vehicles available in Portugal are comparatively assessed: a gasoline and a diesel internal combustion vehicles, a hybrid electric vehicle, two plug-in electric vehicles (10 miles and 40 miles), and a battery electric vehicle. These alternatives are compared on the basis of two alternative NR for seven Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators and five use-phase indicators. The two NR selected were average fleet impacts calculated for i) the 2011 Portuguese fleet and ii) a renovated fleet considering the new EURO 5 vehicles according to the distribution of vehicle types in Portugal. The results show that the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) is the alternative with the lowest impacts in most of the indicators considered; on the other hand, the gasoline internal combustion vehicle is the alternative with the highest impacts in most of the indicators considered. The use of two NR provided different conclusions, even though the best and worst alternative for each specific indicator is identical.