An Overview of the Circular Economy Lifecycle Assessment and VIsualization (CELAVI) Framework

Conference · Thu Sep 17 04:00:00 EDT 2020

OSTI ID:1669589

Eberle, Annika; Hanes, Rebecca; Ghosh, Tapajyoti; Key, Alicia

A circular economy emphasizes the efficient use of all resources (e.g., materials, land, water). Despite anticipated overall benefits to society, the transition to a circular economy is likely to create regional differences in impacts. Current tools are unable to fully evaluate these potential externalities, which will be important for informing research prioritization and regional decision making. This presentation will review and contrast nine current impact assessment methods and describe their granularity, scope, data requirements, and capabilities within the context of identifying regional and sectoral transfers of impacts that could result from transitioning to a circular economy for energy systems. The review of current approaches highlights the need for a new hybrid circularity assessment framework that leverages multiple methods. We describe one such approach: the Circular Economy Lifecycle Assessment and VIsualization (CELAVI) framework. CELAVI uses system dynamics to model material flows for multiple circular economy pathways, network theory to track the spatial and sectoral flow of functional units across a graph, and discrete event simulation to to step through time and evaluate lifecycle assessment data at each time step. The framework is designed to be flexible and scalable enough to accommodate multiple energy materials and multiple energy technologies. CELAVI's hybridization of multiple existing methods yields additional capabilities, which may help answer questions about how flows between the technosphere and ecosphere may evolve if the circularity of energy systems is modified.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1669589
• Report Number(s): NREL/PR-6A20-77599; MainId:29525; UUID:1f074230-eabc-4034-9df5-a5c30cfbcd72; MainAdminID:17428
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
Python
circular economy
discrete event simulation
environmental impacts of energy systems
hybrid methods
life cycle assessment
material flows in energy systems
system dynamics