Natech Risk and the Impact of High-GWP Content Release on LCA of Industrial Components

Industrial facilities can be severely affected by natural hazards (NHs) often resulting in significant social, environmental, and economic consequences. One of the most serious consequences of Natech's events is the accidental release of hazardous chemicals. While special attention has been paid to leakage prevention of toxic, flammable, or pollutant components to date, the possible effects in terms of green house gas (GHG) emissions have not been thoroughly investigated. NH can trigger, indeed, the release of high global warming potential (GWP) compounds such as fluorinated gases, nitrous oxides and others chemicals from collapsed components and/or structures. Nonetheless, conventional approaches to integrate NHs with LCA of buildings focus mostly on the embodied carbon metric, evaluated as in the Bill of Material procedure. As demonstrated by empirical evidence, these methods do not take into account the possible high-GWP compounds release in the case of extensive damage or collapse, which may lead to a general underestimation of the related carbon footprint. It is worth noticing that current international standards do not explicitly recommend the inclusion of these aspects in LCA procedures for structures. To cope with these issues, we introduce in this paper both the new concept of content release GHG emission potential (CGEP) and, a procedure, capable of integrating these effects with LCA. Finally, we provide some examples of industrial components characterized by a significant CGEP.