Coupled life cycle assessment and data envelopment analysis for mitigation of environmental impacts and enhancement of energy efficiency in grape production

摘要

In this study, the energy flow and environmental impacts in grape production system are studied at first Then, energy consumption is optimized to determine optimum energy consumption pattern for saving energy and mitigating adverse environmental impacts in the production system. To attain this purpose, a combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is conducted. In this study, 58 vineyards are examined in Arak county, Iran. The energy input and output are computed as 33,264.47 MJ ha(-1) and 211,715.80 MJ ha(-1), respectively. Results indicate that 22.41% of the studied vineyards operate efficiently. The optimization by using constant returns to scale (CRS) method shows saving of 3628.18 MJ ha(-1) (10.90%) in energy consumption. The most potential reduction in energy consumption is related to potassium fertilizer, by 27.14%. LCA results show that poultry manure is the hotspot in six impact categories, including Global Warming (GW), Abiotic Depletion (AD), Ozone Layer Depletion (OLD), Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity (FAE), Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity (MAE), and Terrestrial Ecotoxicity (TE). The coupled application of LCA + DEA shows reduction in impact categories in the range of 0.25% for Acidification to 18% for Ozone Layer Depletion. Accordingly, the estimated value of GW impact category is reduced by 10%. It is concluded that results of the coupled LCA and DEA is able to help to convince farmers to reduce input consumption so as to attain operational efficiency, lower costs and lower environmental impacts in grape production system. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.