Abstract
Climate change mitigation strategies must be evaluated not only for their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also for their broader environmental consequences. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used to assess environmental impacts across entire value chains, yet current approaches remain limited in their ability to represent biodiversity impacts caused by climate change. Existing characterization methods often rely on global average temperature responses, overlook temporal dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions, and capture only a limited subset of species and ecosystems, restricting their ability to support robust environmental decision-making.
This PhD thesis advances the characterization of climate change impacts in LCA and applies these developments to the assessment of bioenergy systems. First, it evaluates the bioenergy potential and environmental performance of cultivating perennial grasses on abandoned cropland across Europe using a spatially explicit LCA framework. The results indicate substantial climate mitigation potential while also revealing regional trade-offs related to water use, eutrophication, and soil dynamics.
Second, the thesis develops the first global set of spatially and taxonomically explicit characterization factors linking greenhouse gas emissions to biodiversity impacts. These factors integrate temperature responses to individual greenhouse gases with species-specific thermal sensitivities for more than 26,000 terrestrial and marine species across multiple climate scenarios.
Finally, these methodological advances are applied to evaluate bio-jet fuel systems based on perennial grasses grown on abandoned cropland in Europe. The findings demonstrate how improved biodiversity modelling and spatially informed bioenergy deployment can influence conclusions about the climate benefits and environmental trade-offs of aviation fuels.
Overall, the thesis provides methodological and applied advances that enable more spatially explicit Life Cycle Assessments of climate mitigation strategies, particularly bioenergy systems, and their potential biodiversity impacts.