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On a previous study, the carbon footprint (CF) of all production and consumption activities of Galicia, an Autonomous Community located in the north-west of Spain, was determined and the results were used to devise strategies aimed at the reduction and mitigation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The territorial LCA methodology was used there to perform the calculations. However, that methodology was initially designed to compute the emissions of all types of polluting substances to the environment (several thousands of substances considered in the life cycle inventories), aimed at performing complete LCA studies. This requirement implies the use of specific modelling approaches and databases that in turn raised some difficulties, i.e., need of large amounts of data (which increased gathering times), low temporal, geographical and technological representativeness of the study, lack of data, and presence of double counting issues when trying to combine the sectorial CF results into those of the total economy. In view of these of difficulties, and considering the need to focus only on GHG emissions, it seems important to improve the robustness of the CF computation while proposing a simplified methodology. This study is the result of those efforts to improve the aforementioned methodology. In addition to the territorial LCA approach, several Input-Output (IO) based alternatives have been used here to compute direct and indirect GHG emissions of all Galician production and consumption activities. The results of the different alternatives were compared and evaluated under a multi-criteria approach considering reliability, completeness, temporal and geographical correlation, applicability and consistency. Based on that, an improved and simplified methodology was proposed to determine the CF of the Galician consumption and production activities from a total responsibility perspective. This methodology adequately reflects the current characteristics of the Galician economy, thus increasing the representativeness of the results, and can be applied to any region in which IO tables and environmental vectors are available. This methodology could thus provide useful information in decision making processes to reduce and prevent GHG emissions., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Normalisation is an optional step in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), often used in decision making since it helps interpreting the results of LCA studies with regard to some reference information. The applicable ISO standard recommends considering different reference systems to guarantee the robustness of the normalisation step, and so the availability of different normalisation datasets becomes of high relevance. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods provide normalisation factors (NFs) for global and regional areas, but no NFs are proposed for smaller areas such as local or subnational scales. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of using territorial LCA approach to determine subnational NFs. Normalisation datasets for both Galician (NW Spain) production and consumption activities have been calculated considering a life cycle perspective. In addition to this, the normalisation datasets calculated for Galicia have been used to evaluate two food products produced and/or consumed in the region as case studies. Then, the normalised results have been compared to those obtained using different reference systems (Europe and the World), calculated following the same methodology (ReCiPe). A qualitative uncertainty analysis of the NFs has been carried out, and the usefulness of territorial LCA to determine them has been discussed. It was concluded that territorial LCA is a promising way to determine NFs but that some improvements could be made, which have also been pointed out here., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Galicia is an Autonomous Community located in the north-west of Spain. As a starting point to implement mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change, a regional greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory is needed. So far, the only regional GHG inventories available are limited to the territorial emissions of those production activities which are expected to cause major environmental degradation. An alternative approach has been followed here to quantify all the on-site (direct) and embodied (indirect) GHG emissions related to all Galician production and consumption activities. The carbon footprint (CF) was calculated following the territorial life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for data collection, that combines bottom-up and top-down approaches. The most up-to-date statistical data and life cycle inventories available were used to compute all GHG emissions. This case study represents a leap of scale when compared to existing studies, thus addressing the issue of double counting, which arises when considering all the production activities of a large region. The CF of the consumption activities in Galicia is 17.8 ktCO 2 e/year, with 88% allocated to Galician inhabitants and 12% to tourist consumption. The proposed methodology also identifies the main important contributors to GHG emissions and shows where regional reduction efforts should be made. The major contributor to the CF of inhabitants is housing (32%), followed by food consumption (29%). Within the CF of tourist consumption, the share of transport is highest (59%), followed by housing (26%). The CF of Galician production reaches 34.9 MtCO 2 e/y, and its major contributor is electricity production (21%), followed by food manufacturing (19%). Our results have been compared to those reported for other regions, actions aimed at reducing GHG emissions have been proposed, and data gaps and limitations identified., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This study compares a premium brand of UHT milk, Unicla, characterised by an improved nutritional composition, to conventional milk, in terms of health effects and environmental impacts. Unlike enriched milks, in which nutrients are added to the final product, Unicla is obtained naturally by improving the diet of the dairy cows. Health effects have been analysed based on literature findings, while the environmental analysis focused on those spheres of the environment where milk is expected to cause the higher impacts, and thus carbon (CF) and water footprints (WF) have been determined. Five final products have been compared: 3 conventional (skimmed, semi-skimmed, whole) and 2 Unicla (skimmed, semi-skimmed) milks. As a functional unit, one litre of packaged UHT milk entering the regional distribution centre has been chosen. The improved composition of Unicla milk is expected to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and to protect consumers against oxidative damage, among other health benefits. Concerning the environmental aspect, CF of Unicla products are, on average, 10% lower than their conventional equivalents, mainly due to the lower enteric emissions of caused by the Unicla diet. No significant differences were found between the WF of Unicla and conventional milk. Raw milk is the main contributor to both footprints (on average, 83.2 and 84.3% of the total CF of Unicla and conventional milk, respectively, and 99.9% of WF). The results have been compared to those found in literature, and a sensitivity analysis has been performed to verify their robustness. The study concludes that switching to healthier milk compositions can help slowing down global warming, without contributing to other environmental issues such as water scarcity. The results should encourage other milk companies to commit to the development of healthier, less environmentally damaging products, and also to stimulate consumers to bet on them., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)