Life Cycle Analysis – A Tool to Understand SustainabilityFor my own take on this, see my "Belconnen to City Transitway Submission".
Date: Wednesday 20th September 2006
Location: Engineering Lecture Theatre, Building 32, Grid reference F4.
Time: 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm
Cost: Free
ABSTRACT:
Both Dr Faltenbacher and Dr Gediga will be in Australia attending a conference on alternative transport energies in Perth.
During this seminar they will give an overview of their work, their methodologies and then some detailed results and analysis of a couple of case studies.
Life cycle analysis is vital in discussing the cradle to grave impact of sustainable energy technologies. The work carried out in the Engineering Department at the ANU and, within engineering, the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems responds well to life cycle analysis.
BIO:
Dr Michael Faltenbacher is in charge of all projects focusing on fuels for transportation energy systems within the PE Consulting Group based in Germany.
From 1999 to 2005 he was a research Engineer at the Department of Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Stuttgart, Chair of material science of metal and polymers, IKP. During that time he was, amongst other things, the coordinator of the accompanying studies for the world’s largest fuel cell bus demonstration trial taking place in 10 European cities as well as in Perth, Western Australia, and Beijing, China (CUTE – Clean Urban Transport for Europe).
Dr Johannes Gediga is an expert in evaluating and improving the performance of product systems. He has extensive experience in the metals and mining industries, including non-ferrous and precious metals processing. `He has expertise in economic calculations, weak point analysis, and technology benchmark energy efficiency studies, with a focus on sustainability and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Life Cycle Analysis, 20 Sep, Canberra
Free seminar in Canberra at the Australian National University:
On Wednesday I attended "Life Cycle Analysis – A Tool to Understand Sustainability" Life by Dr Faltenbacher and Dr Gediga in Canberra at the Australian National University:
ReplyDelete"During this seminar they will give an overview of their work, their methodologies and then some detailed results and analysis of a couple of case studies. Life cycle analysis is vital in discussing the cradle to grave impact of sustainable energy technologies."
They uses some software to check the environmental effects of production processes and whole companies. I asked them if they applied the same process to their own company and they said they did (having to fly to Australia to give a talk pushed up their greenhouse gas emissions).
They use the ISO14000 Series of Standards on Environmental Management Systems. These are like the ISO 9000 quality management standards and lend themselves to simple form filling automation .
Perhaps this process could be applied to questions like: "Are web pages better for the environment than paper documents?". I would assume that replacing printed reports with copies on the web would be good for the environment by reducing paper use and cost of transporting the documents. But to view a web page you have to have a computer which consumes resources to make, operate and dispose of. Do the savings on the paper offset the computer costs?