Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Alternatives for Replacement of Natural Gas in Building Material Industry

Due to environmental and geopolitical reasons, the need for substitution of fossil fuels with renewable alternatives in industry is augmenting. The main objective was to assess environmental impacts of “cradle-to-gate” brick production stages and to evaluate the effect of fuel substitution and variation of electricity mix on the impact. Scenarios with natural gas, bio-methane, first and second generation bio-fuels used as the fuels in industrial furnace were studied. Scenarios were analyzed using “ReCiPe” and “EcoIndicator’99” impact assessment methods. Results show that environmental impact can be reduced by circa 50% when natural gas is substituted with bio-methane or second generation bio-fuel.