Including CO2-emission equivalence of changes in land surface albedo in life cycle assessment. Methodology and case study on greenhouse agriculture

Purpose Climate change impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA) are usually assessed as the emissions of greenhouse gases expressed with the global warming potential (GWP). However, changes in surface albedo caused by land use change can also contribute to change the Earth’s energy budget. In this paper we present a methodology for including in LCA the climatic impacts of land surface albedo changes, measured as CO2-eq. emissions or emission offsets.