A Carbon Footprint Study and a Life Cycle Assessment of an identical Refrigerated Display Cabinet: comparative analysis of the respective ratios of embodied and operational impacts

Environmental footprinting is widely used in the academic, industrial and political circles alike. But it is in the product centric category of environmental footprinting techniques that Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) emerged as pivotal instruments in response to the climate change and sustainability imperatives. In addition, these techniques have been the object of several international assessment guidelines and according to Carbonostics (2011) and Fishwick (2012) they can be evaluated in terms of international acceptance, time/cost involvement and comparability. In contrast, little literature discusses the dissimilarities inherent in the use of different environmental measurements for an identical product. That is the reason why this paper presents a comparison between the results obtained from a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) against that of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for an identical Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RDC). Results of the study show that the proportions (embodied/operational) derived from a PCF and that an LCA for an identical RDC are dissimilar; and the implications of those results warrant the need for further research but strengthens the case for LCA over PCF because the former offers a more holistic environmental assessment. Moreover, initial results show that the ratio of embodied and operational impact are 5% and 95% while that of the LCA are 20% and 80% respectively. This paper will present in turn an overview of the RDC studied, the set of assumptions made, and breakdowns of the results for PCF and LCA as well as avenues for further research.