Page 222 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

208 R.K. Rosenbaum et al.

Fig. 10.9 Direct GHG emission shares (% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions) of five major
economic sectors in the world in 2010. The pull-out shows how indirect CO 2 emission shares (in
% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions) from electricity and heat production are attributed to
sectors of final energy use. ‘Other Energy’ refers to all GHG emission sources in the energy sector
other than electricity and heat production. ‘AFOLU’ stands for Agriculture, Forestry, and Other
Land Use [taken from IPCC (2014b)]

So far radiative forcing agents with shorter atmospheric lifetime than methane
are not considered in LCIA even though they also contribute to changing tem-
peratures. However, a UNEP-SETAC expert workshop in 2016 recommended that
climate change assessment at midpoint should be split into two sub-categories,
respectively, focusing on the long-term climate change contributions and on the rate
by which temperature changes occur. The two would be expressed in different
metrics and not aggregated at midpoint level. It is expected that the distinction into
two midpoint categories will cater better for the damage modelling since both rate
of change and magnitude of the long-term temperature increase are important.
Endpoint characterisation of climate change is a challenge due to the complexity
of the underlying environmental mechanisms with multiple feedback loops of
which many are probably unknown, the global scale and the very long time per-
spective. In particular damages to human health are also strongly affected by local
and regional differences in vulnerability and ability of societies to adapt to changing