Energy and environmental impacts of energy related products (ErP): a case study of biomass-fuelled systems

Abstract Energy-related Products (ErP) account for a large proportion of European energy and natural resource consumption. In 2007, ErP were responsible for the consumption of about 239 Mtoe of electricity and about 555 Mtoe of fuels. In order to reduce the energy and environmental impacts of these products, the European Commission published the Directive 2009/125/EC on the eco-design of ErP. This Directive represents a key component of European policy for improving the energy and environmental performances of products in the internal market. In this context, it is important to develop scientific research aimed at assessing the energy and environmental impacts of ErP, and at defining their eco-design criteria. In fact, the European Commission estimated that, in 2020, the application of eco-design for ErP could save about 32 Mtoe of electricity, which represents more than 12% of the final 2009 electricity consumption in Europe. Among the ErP, an important share of the market is comprised of solid fuel appliances (including biomass boilers), which, in 2007, reached sales of 313,000 units in Europe, and of micro-cogeneration systems, of which worldwide sales, in 2008, were 22,700 units. In the context of the above Directive, the paper presents the results of a Life Cycle Assessment applied to two biomass fuelled systems: 1) a system constituted by a biomass boiler that produces thermal energy for heating and domestic hot water; and 2) a micro-combined heat and power system, comprised of a biomass boiler and electricity equipment that generate heat and electricity. The main goal of the study is to compare the energy and environmental performance of the two systems, and to identify the life-cycle steps of the systems that are characterized by the higher impacts. The selected functional unit is 1 GJ of net thermal energy produced by each examined system. The results show that system 1) causes higher impacts than system 2), in which heat and electricity are produced. For both systems, the operation step is responsible for about 97–99% of the total primary energy consumption, and contributes to environmental impacts by more than 71%. The obtained results can be used as an environmental ‘knowledge basis’ for the assessment of the energy and environmental performances of biomass boilers and micro-cogeneration systems, the identification of improvement solutions and the definition of eco-design criteria.