ENV-07-122 Lessons Learned From an Alternative Energy Manufacturing Plant Life Cycle Assessment and Potential Implications for Refineries

Description:

Marketplace pressure to support claims of environmental benefits for products was one factor that led BP Solar to conduct a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of its solar panel manufacturing plant in Frederick, Maryland. In one of the first comprehensive efforts using an LCA approach and actual plant data for a manufacturing plant in US, BP Solar developed a model of its operations, and has already used it to set environmental project priorities within the facility. The assessment looked at six impacts: global warming, resource depletion, ozone depletion, photo-oxidant formation, eutrophication, acidification, human toxicity, and aquatic and terrestrial toxicity measures. Production data for three years was used to develop a facility-specific LCA spreadsheet that was subsequently converted into a web-based tool for analysis of manufacturing scenarios on an ongoing basis. The model considered raw material sources, manufacturing, transportation, installation, product use, and disposal. Results indicated that impacts for the manufacturing site were influenced most heavily by electricity consumption in the wafer casting operation and the use of aluminum frames for the solar panels. These impacts were not those previously judged by the facility to be the most significant. The conclusions drawn from this LCA suggest that a facility LCA footprint can be influenced by decisions made about sources of supply for raw materials, catalysts, chemicals it uses, etc. Factors such as transportation distance, energy used in their manufacture and the resources depleted in their processes can be significant and changes might be possible without significant cost to a refinery. This paper will discuss how the LCA process used for BP Solar could be applied to a refinery.