Comparative LCA between biobasedand petroleum-basedlubricants : Identification of data gaps to consider whenproviding decision support

Sammanfattning: This report aimed to provide decision support regarding a potential switch from a petroleum-based lubricant to a bio-based lubricant. The support was supposed to be provided based on a comparative lifecycle assessment (LCA) adjusted to encompass the specific situation of the company under consideration. The decision support could not be fully reached due to identified data gaps in the database data and uncertainties provided by indirect land use change (iLUC). The reason is that the result from this study showed that toxicity and climate change were the most important factors which in turn lacked data. There were unspecified oil leakages identified within the petroleum data which could not be accounted for by the impact assessment method, it was therefore unclear to which degree this result was representative of reality. In the Ecoinvent 3.5 database data the values for toxicity is much higher for agriculture than for petroleum. The difference on climate change impact between the two systems varies depending on the degree of the inclusion of indirect land use change. Since these two very important factors could not be assessed with satisfying accuracy and precision, the decision support could sadly not be provided. However, it was identified that the agriculture and petroleum are the main hot spots. Collection of more accurate and precise data on those subjects are therefore the key to reach a decision support. The results from this report suggest that if agriculture can be proven to have lower impact than crude oil extraction and petroleum manufacturing then a switch would be likely to be environmentally beneficial. This could be beneficial to future studies. Other reports might be able to utilize these findings and provide better decision support by putting more effort on agriculture, crude oil extraction and petroleum manufacturing in future comparative studies.