The Method of Life-Cycle Assessment and Total Energy Consumption and Emissions to the Environment during Extraction, Production and Use of Important Materials and Metals
A Three Day Seminar and Workshop at the Technical Education Development Centre (TEDC), Bandung, Indonesia; October 2 to 4, 2001

Life-Cycle Assessment is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with producing and processing materials, manufacturing products, preparing fuel or electricity, or perfor-ming an activity. The assessment or evaluation is three fold considering: Resource Depletion, Human Health and Ecological Health. It includes the entire life cycle of the product, process, or activity, including extracting and processing raw material; manufacturing, transportation and distribution; use, reuse, maintenance; recycling, and final disposal.
Stand-alone Eco-Indicator figures cannot reveal where the most environmental burden comes from. One needs at least a split into the different environmental effects. From a practical and teaching point of view, one has to keep a tool simple and easy to understand for every body, especially, if one wants to convince decision makers and people. Therefore, the seminar lectures is focussed on the Total Energy use as a measure for harm to the environment. However has to keep in mind that the use of energy emits not only CO2 but also other greenhouse gases and, even more important, there is a backpack of other effects associated with energy use. There are emissions not only to the atmosphere leading to ozon depletion, photochemical oxi-dant formation/smog, also to impacts to human and the ecosystem through toxic air intake of heavy metals etc. and also impacts to water leading to acidification, eutrophication and to soil.

There are nine seminar lectures with lecture notes covering the following topics:
1. Introduction to Ecobalance or Life-Cycle Assessment 18 pages
2. Example of a Life-Cycle Analysis: Petroleum Diesel vs. Biodiesel 35 pages
3. Energy Data and Values for Total Energy Demands 11 pages
4. Life-Cycle Inventory of Steel 17 pages
5. Life-Cycle Inventory and Greenhouse Gases of Aluminium 15 pages
6. Ecoprofiles of Polymer Materials 50 pages
7. Total Energy of Metals and Construction Materials 2 pages
8. Example: Total Energy of a Passenger Car over a 150'000 km Life-Cycle 6 pages
9. Ecological Footprint of Nations: Indonesia and all other Countries 21 pages
Appendix: Publications, Data Basis, Software and Internet Links 4 pages

The purpose of the seminar is to

• give participants basic understanding of Life Cycle Assessment and Ecoprofiles
• consider the production chain for questions about material resources and energy aspects
• provide comprehensive data on total energy of material and products over life cycle
• apply some data to simple engineering’s problems
• enable to use the total energy (and greenhouse gases) approach in class room or your job.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Stuecheli
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Winterthur (Switzerland)
Financial support for this Seminar and Workshop comes from
SwissContact, the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation