D11.4 Life Cycle Sustainability Report
Creators: name: Pechsiri, Joseph
name: Monteiro Souza, Alexandre
name: Shigwedha, Paulus
name: Ericsson, Niclas
Publisher: name: SteamBioAfrica
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Sustainability sciences

description: This deliverable report is the fourth and final report from Work Package 11 (WP11) of the SteamBioAfrica (SBA) project. Earlier deliverables have detailed the current state of work and challenges at the time of submission from different methodological perspectives: goal and scope (D11.1), interim assessment (D11.2), and a participatory process report (D11.3). This deliverable provides the final assessment and interpretation of the results from the work carried out in the life cycle studies. It encompasses all components of a life cycle sustainability assessment: environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

The life cycle studies are a central component of SBA, conducted to ensure that future development of value chains based on the superheated steam (SHS) technology does not result in negative burden shifting and that positive life cycle impacts and trade-offs between different impact categories and pillars of sustainability are quantified and made visible to decision-makers, stakeholders, and the public. This will enable the consideration and inclusion of these aspects in strategic decision-making regarding the design and deployment of future systems, which is an integral part of WP12.

This deliverable contains a comprehensive description of the scenarios and value chains assessed in both an industrial use case and a household use case. The SHS systems have been compared to biomass-based value chains in existence in Southern Africa today, as well as to using fossil coal in industry to achieve the same function as with the SHS solid fuel. The impacts from all stages of the life cycle (harvesting, logistics, biomass upgrading, distribution, and end use) are included, as well as potential land management impacts on ecosystem carbon stocks and their implications for global mean surface temperature change over time.

The development of the life cycle model was challenging from several perspectives, as it requires extensive data, both quantitative and qualitative. Each additional impact category requires a new set of data. The availability of data from previous studies was very limited at the beginning of this project, making it necessary to focus on a few important impact categories. A stakeholder participatory process was used to ensure that the assessment and outcome of this work are relevant to the target groups.

A significant focus was dedicated to quantifying the resource use and emissions from the SHS value chain. Due to technical issues in the implementation of the biomass preprocessing test run phases (at the SHS process plant), the amount of data on resource use and emissions from the plant is limited. This leaves a lot of uncertainty about the impacts of the SHS system. Impacts from the household end-use phase could not be assessed either, since reliable testing results were not generated before the submission of this deliverable. For this reason, the end-use efficiency was considered in all scenarios, but not the emissions related to the household use of the fuel.

Nevertheless, the quantitative and qualitative information generated from the systematic development of biomass-based value chain scenarios and their assessment provides valuable insights for post-project dissemination and exploitation activities. This will be of great value in guiding policymakers and stakeholders at different levels within the value chain.