Department of Wood Science, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Department of Wood Science, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Nov 25;849:157937. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157937. Epub 2022 Aug 8.
Bamboo is considered a promising solution to mitigate climate change because of its carbon sequestration capability and versatile applications. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to evaluate the environmental performance of various bamboo products. This study compared the Global Warming Potential (GWP) values of bamboo products with those of the corresponding benchmark materials (e.g., steel, concrete, plastics) through a comprehensive literature review of relevant LCA studies. The results showed that bamboo products often lead to lower GWP values. In several other cases, we also observed significant variability in the comparison results due to a wide range of assumptions regarding bamboo cultivation, processing, product manufacturing, energy supply, and choices of the LCA database adopted by the reviewed studies. We analyzed the key modeling assumptions for each life cycle stage of bamboo products and established a harmonized inventory dataset to reduce the uncertainty in modeling the processed bamboo (as a raw material for subsequently manufacturing various products). Based on the harmonized dataset, we conducted a cradle-to-gate LCA and concluded that the major contributor to the overall GWP result was electricity consumption (and associated carbon intensity of energy generation) during bamboo processing. We also concluded that future research was needed to improve the transparency, consistency, and comprehensiveness of LCA studies on bamboo products.
竹子因其固碳能力和广泛的应用而被认为是缓解气候变化的一种有前途的解决方案。生命周期评估 (LCA) 已被用于评估各种竹制品的环境性能。本研究通过对相关 LCA 研究的综合文献回顾，比较了竹制品与相应基准材料（如钢、混凝土、塑料）的全球变暖潜势 (GWP) 值。结果表明，竹制品通常导致较低的 GWP 值。在其他几个情况下，我们还观察到由于竹栽培、加工、产品制造、能源供应以及所审查研究采用的 LCA 数据库选择方面的广泛假设，比较结果存在很大的可变性。我们分析了竹制品每个生命周期阶段的关键建模假设，并建立了一个协调的清单数据集，以减少竹制品加工（作为随后制造各种产品的原材料）建模中的不确定性。基于协调数据集，我们进行了摇篮到大门的 LCA，并得出结论，在竹子加工过程中消耗的电力（以及相关的能源发电的碳强度）是导致整体 GWP 结果的主要因素。我们还得出结论，需要开展未来的研究，以提高竹制品 LCA 研究的透明度、一致性和全面性。
