FORNY220 Life Cycle Assessment - Environmental Impacts of Energy and Waste Systems

Credits (ECTS):10

Course responsible:Hanne Lerche Raadal

Campus / Online:Taught campus Ås

Teaching language:Norsk

Limits of class size:50 places. See note further down.

Course frequency:Annually

Nominal workload:Approx. 300 hours lectures, project assignments and self-study.

Teaching and exam period:This course starts in Spring parallel. This course has teaching/evaluation in Spring parallel.

About this course

The course gives a thorough introduction in methods for analysing environmental and resource impacts of energy systems and products: Environmental systems analyses, life cycle assessments (LCA) and external costs. The primary focus will be on energy and waste systems and technologies used in the energy and waste sector. Objectives, applicability, assumptions, strengths and weaknesses of the models will be discussed. The course includes how to estimate emissions from energy processes, industrial processes, transport, waste treatment, etc.. as well as resource effectiveness and impacts on ecosystem services. The course will focus on emissions related to global warming, eutrophication and acidification, health and eco-toxicity impacts. Through the methods, students will be able to understand the relationship between processes, materials, products and technology, and current environmental and resource challenges. Applications of LCA in companies' environmental strategy work, communication and marketing, with special emphasis on energy systems will be discussed.

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

The students have will:

  • be able to assess environmental and resource profiles of products and energy and waste systems (LCA) on an overall level
  • have knowledge about environmental burdens related to waste and energy systems.
  • have knowledge about management of energy resources and waste.

Skills:

Through the lectures, practical training sessions and project assignment, the students will be able to:

  • define functional unit and related reference flow as a basis for an LCA of a system
  • perform a simple LCA with necessary data collection
  • demonstrate the basic methodological knowledge through the project assignment.

General competence:

The course will give the students insight in how to apply LCA in strategic decisions, marketing and product development and also how to apply LCA for assessing the environmental performance of recycling and energy recovery of waste.

  • Lectures and exercises. The students will prepare a project assigment based on a given subject.
  • Use of Canvas.
  • Knowledge comparable to MATH100, FORNY100, FORNY200.
  • Total assessment:

    • Project assignment in groups counts 40%.
    • Written exam (3 hours) counts 60%.

    All of the evaluated elements in the course must be passed to pass the course.

  • An external examiner will judge a random sample of the project assignments and written exams.
    • First lecture.
    • Exercises delivered. The work is done in teams.
  • Students who want to take the course must apply for admission in Studentweb no later than the 20th of January. After that, the places in the course will be distributed.
  • 60 hours lectures and 30 hours project assignment
  • B-FORNY, M-FORNY
  • 10 credits overlap with FORN220 (previous version).
  • Letter grades
  • Minimum requirements for entrance to higher education in Norway (generell studiekompetanse)