Decoupling Indicators and Life Cycle Assessment of the Food, Energy and Water Nexus

• Main Authors: Ya-Wen Sung, 宋雅文
• Other Authors: 闕蓓德
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ryv6es

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 環境工程學研究所 === 107 === With booming economy and rising population, many resources are facing the problem of scarcity, and the demand of food increase year by year. Yet food production also consumes a lot of energy and has many impacts on human health, climate change, ecosystem quality and resources. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), global food production cost 30% of energy consumption and 70% of freshwater usage in the world. Because food, energy and water are essential for human, many researches about the nexus of these three things were wildly conducted in the recent years. However, most of the researches are mainly about building the evaluation of structure and pattern. And the researches based on food production are mostly focus on the evaluation and quantification of the FEW nexus of a single product supply chain. Only few researches discussed the diversification of food which suit the human requirement. Furthermore, the discussions of the FEW nexus are mainly focus on environment issues and neglect the influence of economy. As a result, these researches will only have limit assist for the decision making. The evaluation of this study meets the calorie demand (75.17%) and supply (57.30%) of the 13 food production supply chains in Taiwan. By using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and ISO 14046 Water Scaarcity Footprint evaluation, this study is able to quantify the potential impact to the environment, energy and water, and the relationship of FEW. Also, this study combines the Decoupling Indicator to discuss the relationship between the environment influence, resource usage and economic benefit. The results showed that the main contribution of environmental impact (per functional unit) are eggs (2.5 mPt), chicken (2.25 mPt) and pork (1.9 mPt). The main contribution of resources impact are eggs (0.16 mPt), chicken (0.15 mPt) and soybean (0.13 mPt). The main contribution of carbon footprint are chicken (6.47 kg CO2 eq), soybean oil (6.43 kg CO2 eq) and eggs (5.58 kg CO2 eq). The main contribution of water scarcity are chicken (28.45 m3), soybean oil (20.17 m3) and fish (18.54 m3). And the results of Decoupling Indicator analysis show that the food production of Taiwan from 2010 to 2015 are all relatively decoupling. In contrast, the food production of Taiwan in 2008, 2009 and 2016 is coupling. The hotspots of environmental impact are the production of pork, chicken and eggs. The hotspots of freshwater usage are chicken, fish, pork and rice. In conclusion, the analysis of this study shows the FEW nexus of food production, the relationship between FEW and economic benefit, and the hotspots of each impacts. These results will further help the decision making of sustainable food production.