The impact of the structure of electricity generation on the environmental footprint of pork meat production

Under the pilot project of the European Commission (EC) related with a common methodology for measuring the environmental efficiency of product and organisation (Product Environmental Footprint - PEF and Organization... [ view full abstract ]

Under the pilot project of the European Commission (EC) related with a common methodology for measuring the environmental efficiency of product and organisation (Product Environmental Footprint - PEF and Organization Environmental Footprint - OEF), the guidelines for calculation of environmental footprint for a 25 products and 2 organisation have been developed. One of these product were red meat product. Environmental efficiency, according to this methodology, is the potential environmental impact of a multi-faceted product life cycle, this means covering various environmental problems. Under this category of pilot actions, rules have been prepared by Technical Secretariats to calculate, verify, and communicate the environmental performance of various categories of product. Because assessment of the environmental footprint of products and organisations may become mandatory in the future - or at least highly recommended as best practice in defining and communicating the environmental impact of products - the key question is related to the impact of such an action on the competitiveness of products and organisations in individual member countries. Because the use of electricity can have a significant impact on the final environmental footprint of a given product and organisation, studies have been undertaken to assess the impact of different energy systems on the outcome. Therefore, the article presents a life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the pork meat production process for different energy scenarios, in accordance with the draft guidelines of product and organisation Environmental Footprint pilot phase of European Commission. Scenario analyses were carried out using data for the European average, Polish, Bulgarian, French and Dutch electricity structure. France and the Netherlands were chosen for the analysis because they are one of the largest pork producers in the European Union. Obtained results was compare with a baseline scenario which represent life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the pork meat production process based on an average energy mix for the EU-27. Alternative scenarios are used the same dataset but with changed energy mix. For the comparison with baseline scenario the following countries energy mix were included: Netherlands, France, Bulgaria and Poland. The results indicated that the use of the Poland electricity generation structure contributes to an increase in the results obtained relative to the baseline scenario in up to 13 of the 15 impact categories. Similarly, in the case of the weighted results, the difference in the cumulative indicators with respect to the baseline was on average 19.9% higher for each scenario. As far as data sensitivity to energy system changes is concerned, it can be stated that the environmental footprint of the meat production process is susceptible to a great deal of variation from the point of view of the results that were obtained (individual impact categories in the individual unit). This indicates a large difference in results for most impact categories in comparison with the baseline scenario.

Keywords: pork meat, PEF, LCA, electricity, environmental footprint