Research project

Application of LCA to Local Measures

As a result of domestic and international moves such as the decision to adopt the kyoto protocol, concrete action to solve environmental problem, beginning with reduction of CO2 emissios, is now required at the field level, including local governments and businesses. Against this background, we began to study methods for supporting local govenments in implementing regional measures to reduce environmental impacts by applying regional measures which consider life cycle.

The 2nd Japanese national LCA project started in 2003 as a three year project, and one of the aims of this project is to establish a methodology to assess the environmental impacts by the implementation of local measures quantitatively. In this project, we try to expand LCA methodology so that it could be applicable to local measures through case studies, such as infrastructure improvement in a new town project in Mie prefecture, establishment of effective systems for biomass resources in Chiba prefecture and creating effective waste management systems in Iwate prefecture.

•  Case Studies in this project (FY 2003-2005)
  
  

  	Biomass utilization system in Chiba Pref. Plan for constructing "Biomass Town" to utilize biomass resources in Chiba Treat the site specific items such as location, transportations.
  	Waste disposal system in Iwate Pref. Program for municipal/industrial waste disposal system Treat the time dependent items considering population change, age structure, etc
  	New town project in Mie Pref. Taki town Project for constructing new town named "crystal town" in Taki town. Estimating utilizations of new town

• List of the Research Papers
  
  

  Date of Issue		[Title] [Name of Conference, Location, pages of Proceedings] / [Authors (Name: Research Center for Life Cycle Asessment)]
  Oct. 2004		LCI for Town Development by Local Government: a Case Study of Taki Town, Mie, Japan The Sixth International Conference on EcoBalance(Ibaraki, Japan), Proceedings: pp.499-502 / Hideaki Kurishima, Haruki Setoyama*1, Zhuguo Li, Yutaka Genchi,Masayuki Sagisaka, Atsushi Inaba [*1 Tokyu Construction Co., Ltd.]
  Oct. 2004		LCI of infrastructure maintenance of local government- An example of the garbage recovery system in Chiba The Sixth International Conference on EcoBalance(Ibaraki, Japan), Proceedings: pp.677-680 / Cuifen YANG, Akio SHIMUZU, Masayuki SAGISAKA, Atsushi INABA