Eco-LCA: An Emergy Inspired Approach and Software to Account for the Contribution of Natural Capital to Economic Activity

One of the main fortes of emergy analysis is its ability to account for the contribution of ecosystem goods and services, or natural capital. Other holistic analysis methods including life cycle assessment, energy and exergy analysis have ignored this crucial contribution from nature, which is the very basis of sustainability. We introduce a novel approach for an Ecologically-Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) that quantifies the dependence of economic activities on nature in biophysical units. The results of Eco-LCA are presented as a hierarchy, with raw data in mass or energy units forming the finest scale of the hierarchy and emergy or ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) forming the coarsest scale. Conventional energy and exergy (industrial cumulative exergy consumption) form the middle layers of this hierarchy. Information about several emissions is also included. Ecosystem goods and services that are considered in this tool include fossil fuels, minerals, air, wind, pollination, fish, water from various sources, land and many others. A web-based, free software tool is being developed to permit Eco-LCA of 488 sectors of the U.S. economy. This tool is based on an ecological-economic model of the 1997 U.S. economy. Illustrative examples will demonstrate the use of Eco-LCA for comparing the life cycle of common products. Transformities calculated from this tool will be compared with those obtained via other studies. Attention will also be drawn toward resources for which transformities are not yet available.