Indirect land use change (ILUC) model
Inventories for including the indirect effects of land use in LCAs are now available in a consequential and an attributional version.
According to IPCC approximately 17% of the global GHG-emissions are related to land use change. Emissions from indirect land use change (ILUC) are generally lacking in LCA studies – or at the best, it is modelled without reasonable considerations on cause-effect relationships between the acquisition of land and the induced effects. Currently, LCAs and carbon footprint studies faces a significant growth. If ILUC effects are not included properly in the LCA results, there is a great risk of producing misleading results. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a good generic way of modelling ILUC. This should not be limited to biofuels or some certain crops in a certain region. There is a need for a generic model that can be applied to all kinds of land using LCA processes (cultivation of crops, cattle grassland, forestry, and land for buildings and infrastructure).
In order to make such a model available, we have established an ILUC Club. We are currently working on the third version of the model and it includes both a consequential and an attributional scenario. The model strives towards establishing a cause-effect relationship between, on the one side:
- the demand for land (e.g. 1 ha yr agricultural land in UK to produce 6 tonnes wheat),
and on the other side:
- the effects on land transformation (especially deforestation in South America and South East Asia),
- intensification (which is also affected as a consequence of changes in demand for land), and
- social effects (e.g. when biofuels causes competition between food and fuels, i.e. a change in demand for land causes changes in marginal food production).
The ILUC Club is open for everyone. The price of subscription is 2000 EUR. Subscription gives access to:
- The ILUC report describing the methodology and data to be used in the modeling. This includes the establishment of a global land use change matrix
- A consequential and an attributional version of the model.
- Any future updates of the report; the second version was released in January 2011, and we are currently working on the third version
- Contributing to the ILUC project
- The ILUC model is documented in a way that makes it relatively straightforward implementing in any LCA software – the ILUC emissions/exchanges are embedded in LCA processes to be linked with any land using activity (for SimaPro users: a SimaPro CSV files with the ILUC LCA processes is provided)
Whenever, new data have been included or methodological development has been implemented, a new report with a new version number will be provided. The project ends with the publication of a public available report or peer reviewed scientific article. Thus, the ILUC club provides access to ILUC data instantly and updates during the project period.
The current members include:
- major global food industries; including producers involved in agriculture, manufacturing of major food items to the bulk market, and manufactures of special ingredients
- paper packaging industry
- the Sustainability Consortium
- the ecoinvent database
- universities in Denmark and Sweden
- consultancy companies in Denmark
For subscription (or questions), please contact us.