22 Adopting Life Cycle Assessment for Various Greenhouse …
351
Following other industries trend, automation of greenhouses has had supplied by
modern enterprises, such as Priva and Hortimax allowing productivity increments
combined with sustainable management of water, energy and nutrients.
22.3.2 High-Tech Greenhouse Structure
In general, heights of the roof and sidewall in a high-tech greenhouse are 8 m and 4 m
respectively, and both will have ventilation mechanisms. Usually, the building materials selected for cladding are plastic film, polycarbonate or glass (Teitel et al. 2012).
Some researches, Valera et al. (2017) analysing greenhouses productivity combined
with economic performance, depicted the fact of crop management developed on
advanced structures does not certainly result in direct increases of these factors. The
outcomes showed that the natural ventilation led to higher yield than other climate
control systems, at minimum cost.
22.4 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
The LCA methodology is based on ISO 14,040 and 14,044 guidelines covering: Goal
and Scope aiming to identifies the functional equivalent, system boundary and the set
of building materials, Life Cycle Inventory’s (LCI) main challenge is the difficulty
of collecting reliable and applicable data. In Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA),
the quantities of materials, energy consumption, and input data are collected using
the environmental impacts indicators. The fourth step is Interpretation to the evaluate
the results obtained from LCI and LCIA (UNEP Setac 2009).
During the last years, a variety of software on LCA methodology have been used to
simplify the analysis for products and systems, such as SimaPro, GaBi, TEAM and
Open LCA. Aiming to provide relevant information about environmental impacts
evaluation, this paper illustrates the classification of different midpoint indicators
that lead to endpoint categories, as shown in Table 22.1.
According to Cellura et al. (2012), LCA could be used as a decision support tool
by three distinct groups:
(a) Product Producers: to improve the environmental performance of a production
system;
(b) Product Consumers: to guide purchasing decisions; and
(c) Policy-makers: to inform and direct long-term strategies.
Protected cultivation presents high productivity and high efficiency of most
resource usage. Conversely, higher demand and use of water, energy, fertiliser and
pesticides result in environmental impacts, such as N-leaching, GWP and energy
consumption (Stanghellini and Montero 2012).
351
Following other industries trend, automation of greenhouses has had supplied by
modern enterprises, such as Priva and Hortimax allowing productivity increments
combined with sustainable management of water, energy and nutrients.
22.3.2 High-Tech Greenhouse Structure
In general, heights of the roof and sidewall in a high-tech greenhouse are 8 m and 4 m
respectively, and both will have ventilation mechanisms. Usually, the building materials selected for cladding are plastic film, polycarbonate or glass (Teitel et al. 2012).
Some researches, Valera et al. (2017) analysing greenhouses productivity combined
with economic performance, depicted the fact of crop management developed on
advanced structures does not certainly result in direct increases of these factors. The
outcomes showed that the natural ventilation led to higher yield than other climate
control systems, at minimum cost.
22.4 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
The LCA methodology is based on ISO 14,040 and 14,044 guidelines covering: Goal
and Scope aiming to identifies the functional equivalent, system boundary and the set
of building materials, Life Cycle Inventory’s (LCI) main challenge is the difficulty
of collecting reliable and applicable data. In Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA),
the quantities of materials, energy consumption, and input data are collected using
the environmental impacts indicators. The fourth step is Interpretation to the evaluate
the results obtained from LCI and LCIA (UNEP Setac 2009).
During the last years, a variety of software on LCA methodology have been used to
simplify the analysis for products and systems, such as SimaPro, GaBi, TEAM and
Open LCA. Aiming to provide relevant information about environmental impacts
evaluation, this paper illustrates the classification of different midpoint indicators
that lead to endpoint categories, as shown in Table 22.1.
According to Cellura et al. (2012), LCA could be used as a decision support tool
by three distinct groups:
(a) Product Producers: to improve the environmental performance of a production
system;
(b) Product Consumers: to guide purchasing decisions; and
(c) Policy-makers: to inform and direct long-term strategies.
Protected cultivation presents high productivity and high efficiency of most
resource usage. Conversely, higher demand and use of water, energy, fertiliser and
pesticides result in environmental impacts, such as N-leaching, GWP and energy
consumption (Stanghellini and Montero 2012).