A life cycle thinking approach applied to novel micromobility vehicle

• Autor(a) principal: Calão, Júlio
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Marques, Daniel, Completo, António G., Coelho,Margarida C.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33419
• topic: Life cycle assessment; Micromobility; Mobility; Sustainability; Greenhouse gas emissions

While the production of cars has high environmental costs, producing and maintaining micromobility vehicles might consume fewer resources. Likewise, replacing the car with active mobility transportation modes reduces noise and air pollution. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology contributes to study such environmentally sustainable solutions. We present a "cradle-to-grave" analysis by tracking the activity from the extraction of raw materials until the product's life ends. The goal is to carry out an LCA of a novel micromobility vehicle under a life cycle thinking perspective. The LCA tool - Good to Go? Assessing the Environmental Performance of New Mobility, developed by the International Transport Forum - was used to model the baseline and alternative scenarios. The vehicle’s materials, primary energy sources for battery charging, use of the vehicle as a shared mobility mode, among other factors, were changed to assess the energy use and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions during the entire life cycle chain. The LCA results at the baseline scenario for the micromobility device, the Ghisallo vehicle, are similar to the values of other micromobility vehicles. Energy consumption (Mega Joule [MJ]) and GHG emissions (grams of equivalent CO2) per vehicle-kilometer are 0.36 [MJ/v-km] and 29 [g CO2 eq/v-km], respectively. For this personal mobility vehicle, it is a conclusion that most GHG emissions are due to production (42% of the total). Air transport from production to sales site increases the impact by 10%. Finally, we present measures to decrease the energy and GHG emissions impact of a micromobility device life cycle.