A Novel Weighting Method in LCIA and its Application in Chinese Policy Context

Abstract

Under given political environmental targets, if explicit and comprehensible conclusions could be reached via weighting method, LCA would play a much more crucial role for enforcement of environmental policies. A couple of distance-to-target weighting methods were proposed for this purpose, but the meaning of weighting was still questionable. Taking Chinese ``Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction (ECER)'' political targets as an example, a different distance-to-target weighting method was proposed, so-called ECER method. The method was tested by a LCA case study on comparison of three desulfuration technologies in float glass production, in which explicit and exclusive conclusions were delivered, i.e. dry process is better than wet process and semi-dry process. And, the differences between ECER and other ``distance-totarget'' methods were discussed.