Evaluating Use-Phase Emissions of Liquid vs Air Cooling in Telecom Base Stations: Attributional and Consequential LCA Variants with Process Correlation

The present research investigates if a proposed full Consequential LCA (FCLCA) methodology is feasible and enhances the understanding compared to simplified Attributional ALCA (SALCA) and simplified CLCA (SCLCA) for avoided emission calculations. An existing case study is used for demonstration: cooling of a radio base station. Compared to existing literature, FCLCA captures rebound effects more realistically. FCLCA – facilitating more granularity and specificity – is moreover preferable to proxy numbers for rebound effects. Despite that the results are mathematically indistinguishable due to uncertainty, the FCLCA confirms credibly the conclusion that liquid cooling will lead to less emissions. FCLCA should therefore always be attempted to increase the credibility of other more commonly performed LCA archetypes. To avoid overstating the uncertainty, comparative and transformational LCAs should always be performed with integrated delta modelling to obtain the sought result, not by two or more separate calculations. This integration takes care of the process correlation which occurs between the compared systems.