Infrastructure and machinery

V1.0

Module name	Infrastructure and machinery
Module category	Transformation
Methodology name	Biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS)
Version	1.0
Methodology ID	RIV-BICRS-T-INFRA-V1.0
Release date	December 4th, 2024
Status	In use

Glossary

This is a Transformation Module and covers the cradle to grave impacts of major infrastructure and machinery. This module is part of the Riverse BiCRS methodology, which allows Project Developers to choose the relevant modules for their project, and shall be used with the necessary accompanying modules.

See more details on how modules are organized in the BiCRS home page.

How to use this module

BiCRS Methodology

Scope of the module

This module covers the embodied emissions from production and end of life of major infrastructure and machinery used for BiCRS projects. Specific infrastructure and machinery vary by project, and may include but are not limited to:

• pyrolysis/gasification reactors*

• feedstock shredders, grinders, dryers and conveyors*

• building structure*

• concrete foundations*

• cables used in large quantities

• silos and storage facilities

• gas cleaning systems

• onsite pipelines

Items marked with an asterisk are required to be considered in the GHG reduction quantification if they weigh more than 1 tonne.

Materials that shall be prioritized are those that are expected to contribute the most to GHG emissions, due to large quantities used and the emission intensity of the material. This includes, for example, steel and its alloys, concrete, virgin aluminum, and copper. Other materials that may be considered, but are lower priority because they contribute fewer GHG emissions, include glass, ceramics, various types of plastics and recycled aluminum. Materials not mentioned here may be omitted. Electronic components (e.g. wiring, circuit boards, screens...) are not included due to their small impact and difficulty in data collection.

Items to include	Items to exclude
Items with a lifetime of 1 year or more	Items with a lifetime of less than 1 year are considered consumables, and are considered in the Processing and energy use module.
Items that have been created/are used as a direct result of the project operations	Pre-existing infrastructure that would have been used by another company/project, if the present project did not exist (e.g. office buildings, foundations...).
Onsite machinery and equipment	Machinery used in the product life cycle but located outside the direct control of the project (e.g. storage silos at the biomass feedstock collection stage)

Eligibility criteria

There are no eligibility criteria requirements specific to this module. Eligibility criteria requirements shall be taken from the accompanying modules and methodologies:

BiCRS methodology

• Additionality

• No double counting

• Targets alignment

Other modules

• Permanence

• Substitution

• Co-benefits

• No double counting

• ESDNH

• Leakage

Riverse Standard Rules

• Measurability

• Real

• TRL

• Minimum impact

GHG quantification

The GHG reduction quantification instructions from all other modules used by the project must be used in conjunction with the present module in order to obtain full life-cycle GHG reduction quantifications.

The system boundary of this quantification section includes the raw material extraction, processing, and end of life waste treatment of major infrastructure and machinery used in the project life cycle (excluding transport machinery, which are covered in the Transportation module).

Quantification shall be done once during validation, and GHG emissions shall be allocated temporally to each verification year that credits are issued for (see more details in the Temporal Allocation section). This module may be considered during monitoring and subsequent verifications only if new infrastructure/machinery are declared by the Project Developer for that year.

The scope of the module, and which infrastructure and machinery items to include, are described in the Scope of the module section.

No Baseline scenario shall be considered by default for this module.

Project Developers may choose between two modeling options:

• Full approach: This includes detailed measuring, reporting and modeling of important infrastructure and machinery used. Data collection is more difficult, but fewer conservative assumptions/discounts are made.

• Simplified approach: For projects where infrastructure and machinery are not large contributors to GHG emissions (see details below), a proxy facility with infrastructure and machinery may be used. Data collection is simple and uncertainty is high, so efforts are taken to ensure this approach overestimates GHG emissions rather than underestimates.

Data sources

The required primary data for GHG reduction calculations from projects are presented in Table 1. These data shall be provided once during validation, and made publicly available.

Table 1 Summary of primary data needed from projects and their source for initial project certification and validation. Two asterisks (**) indicate which data are optional, where a conservative default choice will be applied

Full approach

Parameter	Unit	Source
Item type	Selection	NA
Material type	Selection	Technical specifications, bill of materials, invoices, building design documents
Material amount	kg, tonne, m$^3$	Same as above
Item lifetime**	years	Same as above
List of items that were excluded	Selection	Description of the system and transparent justification

Data shall be reported in terms of items (e.g. pyrolysis reactor) and the materials that make up each item (e.g. stainless steel, ceramics).

Material amounts may be directly provided in the sources, or may be calculated using basic conversions based on a primary source plus justified conversion factors (e.g. density).

Simplified approach

Parameter	Unit	Source
Tonnes of biomass processed annually (dry matter)	tonne	Contract with biomass supplier, operations tracking, invoices

The version 3.10 (hereafter referred to as ecoinvent) shall be the main source of emission factors unless otherwise specified. Ecoinvent is preferred because it is traceable, reliable, and well-recognized. The ecoinvent processes selected are detailed in Appendix.

If the available emission factors do not accurately represent the project, a different emission factor may be submitted by the Project Developer, and approved by the Riverse Certification team and the VVB. Any emission factor must meet the data requirements outlined in the Riverse Standard Rules, and come from traceable, transparent, unbiased, and reputable sources.

No other secondary data sources are used in this module.

If the project undergoes ex-ante validation, estimations and calculations may be accepted instead of measured primary data. These shall be replaced by measured primary data upon verification. Any estimates and calculations should be justified with:

• process engineering documents

• technical specifications for machinery

• measured data from previous projects or from the scientific literature

• statistics or databases

Note that conservative estimates and calculations shall always be made to avoid overestimating provisional credits.

Temporal allocation

Infrastructure and machinery have significant GHG emissions over their entire lifespan. However, for the purpose of issuing carbon credits, these emissions must be distributed proportionally across the specific verification period under review ("amortized"), rather than being counted entirely upfront.

For example, if a pyrolysis machine has an expected lifetime of 7 years, and its embodied life cycle GHG emissions are 35 t CO$_2$eq, then its emissions amortized to 1 year are $35/7=5$ t CO$_2$eq/year. For the annual verification and issuance of the project, 5 t CO$_2$eq would be counted towards the project emissions for the pyrolysis machinery.

The lifetimes provided in Table 2 shall be used by default for various types of items. Note that they are very conservative estimates for lifetimes in order to avoid over-crediting, and due to the high uncertainty around the durability of such items. Project Developers may provide proof to justify a different lifetime, subject to the approval of the VVB and the Riverse Certification team.

Table 2 Assumed expected lifetimes are presented for various types of machinery and infrastructure.

Item	Lifetime (years)
Pyrolysis reactor	7
Feedstock shredder, grinder, dryer	7
Gas cooling, cleaning, and energy recovery	10
Silos, hoppers	10
Buildings, sheds	20
Aboveground pipelines	20
Underground pipelines	40
Building foundations	50

Co-product allocation

The rules outlined at the methodology-level in the BiCRS methodology document shall be applied for allocating GHG emissions between co-products.

Assumptions

• The estimated lifetimes presented in Table 2 are assumptions.

• The end of life waste treatment methods are assumed, because it is impossible to know what waste treatment methods will be common many years in the future.

• Emission factors for items and materials are grouped together under the most common representative type available in ecoinvent. For example, hundreds of ecoinvent processes are available that describe various production, processing, and waste treatment of steel, but only a selection of steel-related processes are made available in the Riverse platform (see options in Appendix 1).

Project scenario

First all total GHG emissions from infrastructure and machinery are quantified.

Then they are amortized to one year based on the expected lifetime of each item.

Finally they can be normalized to the functional unit of 1 tonne of carbon storage solution, based on the amount of carbon storage solution generated during the verification year.

They can optionally be normalized to the Production Batch, or to the tonne of carbon storage solution in a given Production Batch, for informational purposes only. RCCs are ultimately verified and issued based on the annual processes.

Full approach

Project Developers shall select items/materials used among the options in Appendix 1. If the relevant input is not listed, it may be added/considered on a case by case basis, and approved by the Riverse Certification team and the VVB.

For each material, Project Developers shall provide the item it corresponds to (e.g. steel for pyrolysis reactor, steel for silo...) and the amount used in the item. Items may be composed of multiple materials, or only one main material. Default lifetimes provided in Table 2 shall be applied, unless Project Developers justify a different lifetime.

Calculations- Full approach

$\textbf{(Eq.1)}\ E_{item, total} = \sum (\text{Amount}_{material, i}\times EF_{material, i})$

Where,

• $E_{item, total}$ represents the total emissions from one item over its service lifetime
• $Amount_{material, i}$ represents the amount of the material of type $i$ used in that item, in the same units as the emission factor described below
• $EF_{material,i}$ represents the emission factor/s for the material of type $i$ in kgCO$_2$eq per given unit from ecoinvent. Based on the available ecoinvent process, some materials require compiling raw material, processing, and waste treatment processes, and some already include these multiple steps.

$\textbf{(Eq.2)}\ E_{item, annual} = E_{item, total} \div lifetime_{item}$

Where,

• $E_{item, annual}$ represents the emissions of one item amortized to one year, corresponding to the annual operations for which RCCs are issued
• $E_{item, total}$ was calculated in Equation 1
• $lifetime_{item}$ represents the expected service lifetime of the item type, as presented in Table 2.

$\textbf{(Eq.3)}\ E_{infra,machinery} = \sum (E_{item,annual})$

Where,

• $E_{infra,machinery}$ represents the total emissions from this module allocated to the project for the annual verification period
• $E_{item,annual}$ was calculated in Equation 2.

Simplified approach

Although it is more precise to accurately measure and report all machinery and infrastructure, this represents a large data collection burden for a life cycle stage that is not expected to be a major contributor to GHG emissions in many BiCRS projects.

Therefore, Project Developers may choose between a full, detailed model of their infrastructure and machinery using primary data, or a simplified approach using a proxy biomass gasification factory with approximately 400-500 t CO$_2$eq over the lifetime (see Appendix 1 for the ecoinvent processes details).

If the simplified approach shows that Infrastructure and machinery contribute to more than 5% of the project's induced emissions (not net emissions, including removals), then this life cycle stage is deemed too important for the project and the simplified approach may not be used. The project must use the Full approach.

The proxy represents a global average biomass gasification factory, so it is adapted by replacing heat and electricity inputs with country-specific sources. It includes the production and waste treatment of buildings, facilities, dryer, gasifier, communication equipment, and gas treatment and conditioning equipment.

Note that due to high uncertainty in the simplified approach, conservative assumptions will be made that likely lead lead to overestimating project emissions from the infrastructure and machinery life cycle stage. For example, although the ecoinvent process represents a facility with a 50 year lifetime, a 15 year lifetime shall be assumed here (see Temporal allocation section). Project Developers shall provide the amount of biomass processes annually, which is used to adjust the default facility to the project size.

For example, if the default facility has

• a life cycle impact of 400 t CO$_2$eq and
• a rate of 10,000 tonnes of dry biomass processed annually

then a project that processes 5,000 tonnes of biomass is assumed to be half the size and have half the impacts of the default option.

Therefore, the project would have 200 t CO$_2$eq from infrastructure and machinery.

Calculations- Simplified approach

$\textbf{(Eq.4)}\ E_{infra, machinery} =\frac{Biomass_P}{Biomass_D} \times EF_D \div lifetime_{facility}$

Where,

• $E_{infra, machinery}$ is described in Equation 3
• $Biomass_P$ represents the annual amount of biomass processed by the project, in tonnes of dry matter
• $Biomass_D$ represents the annual amount of biomass processed by the default factility according to ecoinvent
• $EF_D$ represents the emission factor for the default facility, described above and in Appendix 1
• $lifetime_{facility}$ represents the assumed lifetime of the default facility, used to amortize impacts to 1 year. As described above, this is assumed to be 15 years.

Uncertainty assessment

See general instructions for uncertainty assessment in the Riverse Standard Rules. The outcome of the assessment shall be used to determine the percent of RCCs to eliminate with the .

Uncertainty may come from project data, but this is estimated to be negligible, since it is required to come from a primary source.

The uncertainty of the assumptions in this module is assessed below:

• There is high uncertainty in default expected lifetimes for infrastructure and machinery items, and results are very sensitive to this parameter. Conservative values within a reasonable range were taken.

• There is high uncertainty in the future waste treatment methods, but results are not very sensitive to this parameter.

• There is moderate uncertainty in assuming that the selection of ecoinvent processes for a given material/item are representative of all its uses.

It is expected that the overall project emissions will typically not be very sensitive to the infrastructure and machinery module emissions and uncertainty, since they usually make up a small fraction of the total emissions. The uncertainty for projects from this module is therefore estimated to be low. This translates to an expected discount factor of at least 3% for projects that have significant GHG impacts from infrastructure and machinery.

Monitoring plan

No default monitoring plan is required for this module because data are expected to be reported and calculated only once per crediting period.

The general Project Monitoring and Verification requirements from the Riverse Procedures Manual still apply, where Project Developers shall declare any major changes during monitoring, such as if a major piece of machinery was replaced, or a new piece of infrastructure was installed. GHG reduction quantification shall then be performed as described in the previous section, using primary data described in Table 1.

The Project Developer is the party responsible for adhering to the Monitoring Plan.

Appendix

The table below presents a non-exhaustive selection of Ecoinvent activities that may be used in the GHG reduction calculations for this module. Additional activities may be used for any project, if the following selection does not cover all relevant activities.

Table A1 List of ecoinvent 3.10 processes used in the GHG reduction quantification model, all processes are from the cutoff database

Input	Ecoinvent activity name
Steel alloy, stainless steel production	market for steel, chromium steel 18/8, hot rolled, GLO
Unalloyed steel production	market for steel, low-alloyed, hot rolled, GLO
Reinforcing steel (building)	market for reinforcing steel, GLO
All steel end of life	market for waste reinforcement steel, RoW
Concrete production	market for concrete, normal strength, RoW
Concrete end of life	market for waste concrete, not reinforced, Europe without Switzerland
Copper production	market for copper, cathode, GLO
Aluminum production	market for aluminium, wrought alloy, GLO
Default facility for simplified approach	synthetic gas factory construction, RoW heat, district or industrial, other than natural gas, Europe without Switzerland market group for electricity, medium voltage, European Network of Transmission Systems Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E)