Life Cycle Thinking of Wood-Derived Biomass Utilization

Abstract

Plant-derived resources have become not just an option of raw materials, but also inevitable ones to mitigate fossils significantly. Especially, wood-derived resources are important in Japan due to the large domestic potentials. Life cycle thinking approaches are required for conversion technology options of wood-derived resources into products under research and development, demonstration test, and industrialization. In this study, the requirements of life cycle thinking for wood-derived biomass utilization are overviewed by applying bibliometric analysis into data-driven reviews of related research topics compared with expert-judged topics extracted from reports and literatures. Based on the overviewed keywords, the requirements for life cycle thinking are discussed on the definitions of system boundary, functional unit, assessment index, geographical boundaries, and application into regional system design.