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EU Aquaculture Assistance Mechanism

Recirculating Aquaculture Is Possible without Major Energy Trade-off: Life Cycle Assessment of Warmwater Fish Farming in Sweden

Description

Seafood is seen as promising for more sustainable diets. The increasing production in land-based closed Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RASs) has overcome many local environmental challenges with traditional open net-pen systems such as eutrophication. The energy needed to maintain suitable water quality, with associated emissions, has however been seen as challenging from a global perspective. This study uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental performance and improvement potentials of a commercial RAS farm of tilapia and Clarias in Sweden. The environmental impact categories and indicators considered were freshwater eutrophication, climate change, energy demand, land use, and dependency on animal-source feed inputs per kg of fillet. We found that feed production contributed most to all environmental impacts (between 67 and 98%) except for energy demand for tilapia, contradicting previous findings that farm-level energy use is a driver of environmental pressures. The main improvement potentials include improved by-product utilization and use of a larger proportion of plant-based feed ingredients. Together with further smaller improvement potential identified, this suggests that RASs may play a more important role in a future, environmentally sustainable food system.

Details

Original Author(s)
Bergman, Kristina
Henriksson, Patrik J. G.
Hornborg, Sara
Troell, Max
Borthwick, Louisa
Jonell, Malin
Philis, Gaspard
Ziegler, Friederike
Topic(s)
Diversification and Adding Value, Environmental Performance
Geographical Coverage
Country-specific
Country-specific
Sweden
Date
November 28, 2020
Source