Keywords: Life cycle assessment, supply chain, environmental externalities, biobased feedstock

"Accounting for environmental externalities in the design of biobased supply chains: Value of life cycle assessment for decision-making"

For most of our economic activities, we rely intensively on fossil carbon. The chemical sector is not the exception, but it has somehow managed to “slip under the radar”. This thesis imagined a scenario where fossil carbon is replaced by biobased carbon (produced using agriculture and industrial biomass) within the chemical industry, using as a case study the production of one of the most used polymers – PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Additionally, this thesis highlighted the importance of including both negative and positive environmental impacts in producing this polymer using a set of local biomass sources, different technologies, and supply chain configurations. There are different ways to include these environmental impacts in the design of supply chains, and this thesis presented two methods to do so, first adding a monetary value to the environmental impacts and second, providing trade-offs between environmental and economic criteria.

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