This guide supports the ‘Biodiversity stress from supply chain’ tool, which assesses the impact of a project’s supply chain on biodiversity worldwide, not just on the site itself. It is based on a series of biodiversity stress sources coming from impacts to air, water and soil.
The tool considers the short and long-term impacts of ten indicators within the categories of climate change, pollution, and resource use. European characterisations are used for all impacts except for climate change, for which global characterisations are used.
The applied characterisations provide a quantification of the potential biodiversity impact. This is determined by modelling the relationship between pressure and state of nature, e.g., for a given quantity of a toxic pollutant being released from one location, how does this disperse and impact different ecosystems.
The tool allows you to report on the following life-cycle stages:
- A1-A3 Construction Materials
- A4 Transportation to Site
- A5 Construction Site Operations
The tool works in parallel with other life cycle assessment tools, so you can add the tool to existing projects and use their design data to see results. Any changes to designs in either tool will be reflected in the other. If you have not yet created a project, follow the instructions below.
Building Materials
- Create your project and a new design in One Click LCA
- Fill the building materials query of the design either by manually adding them or by importing your materials. Ensure that you include all the materials required by the calculation scope as detailed above.
Identify your material or similar resource data from the One Click LCA database, including EPDs, and use representative average data and additional data to fill any gaps.
The tool has now been updated to show the relevant impact categories within the material data card. This makes direct comparison with materials in the building materials query easier and faster. This only shows the biodiversity impact value for the material production (A1-A3), the full results below will also include transportation impacts (A5).
- If not already set during your material import, select the correct category or ‘Building Part’ for your included materials.
- Set accurate transportation distances for your materials between the manufacturer location and the project site and select the appropriate transportation method.
- If you do not have accurate transportation data, the default transportation distances selected in the LCA parameters for your project can be used.
- Adjust the localisation of each material as needed (Expert feature). This information will be used to compensate for any material data chosen from another area to match your project’s local material manufacturing conditions.
Construction Site Operations
Add your site impacts either by choosing a suitable construction site scenario in Sections 1 and 2 or by adding project-specific energy, water, waste, etc. into Sections 3 to 7.
Analysing the Results
The results show the cumulative biodiversity stress caused by the supply chain, calculated using a methodology called Potentially Disappeared Fraction of Species (abbreviated as PDF/m2/yr). Results represent an area (m2) where potentially all species disappear for a period of one year.
Measuring the impacts as the extent of global ecosystems impacted rather than the number of species extinctions better represents the relative impact in different ecosystems.
Species disappearances are temporary and vary in duration depending on the stressor and varies by locations of the emissions in the supply chain, so results are normalised into a single area and one year to allow for easier comparison between products or designs with different impact scenarios.
The tool includes two reports: a result report and a Word report.
The result report provides a detailed breakdown of the results for each indicator, which are generally separated into realm-level impacts (terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems), and shows which indicators are included in the three categories of climate change, pollution, and resource use. The result report can be saved in Excel format.
The Word report includes information on the methodology and data used, as well as the headline results from the assessment. Further guidance on correctly interpreting the results are also provided. The Word report uses information from your account and project but the company name, author name, and logo can be customised using the project description query in the tool.
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