Annual Nationwide Environmental Impact Assessment of Japanese Municipalities by Type of Business within the Endpoint-type LCIA Method "lIME2"

This study attempts a comprehensive environmental impact assessment, within the context of annual operations by type of business in each division of Japanese municipality, based on the LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) method. LIME2 (Life-Cycle Impact Assessment Method Based on Endpoint Modeling 2) is an example of an endpoint-type LCIA method developed in Japan. Annual environmental impacts of municipalities nationwide are assessed by LIME2 from the perspective of environmental damage, indexed to the Japanese yen. Here, this index is referred to as the "Eco-index Yen". The availability of necessary inventory data in each category is surveyed from statistical information published by governments. From the assessment results based on these conditions, the annual damage amount of all Japanese municipalities taken together is 4.63 trillion yen. The assessment result of each municipality is converted into indicators per capita and per GRP (Gross Regional Product). These results are displayed on a map of Japan to visualize regional characteristics nationwide by type of business, across different types of industries, including the residential and transportation sectors. As described in this study, these results provide a first step toward constructing a new methodology for comprehensive environmental impact assessment of administrative units.