Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Dig deeper into the LCA world (best practices, challenges, future directions)

Good readings

• [LCA consulting reports]

  • LCA for Dell’s take back program over 4 electronic devices

    • This is an example of an LCA for assessing disposal programs with the potential of extending the device's lifetime. It also includes the critical review statement.

  • A comparative Life Cycle Assessment of plant-based foods and meat foods

  • Life Cycle Assessment of Canada’s Polymer Bank Notes and Cotton-Paper Bank Notes

• [Articles]

  • Toward More Realistic Estimates of Product Displacement in Life Cycle Assessment: how does the definition of functional equivalency affect the LCA results

  • Life cycle assessment, quo vadis? Supporting or deterring greenwashing? A survey of practitioners

  • From analysis-LCA to message-LCA: a lost cause?: "Whereas the LCA practice has been fairly consistent for decades, new and more “creative” approaches like avoided emission and chain of custody (CoC) models, such as the mass balance-credit method and the book and claim model, are emerging recently. This paper presents and discusses challenges associated with these developments."

  • Communicating LCA results

    • Ten easy lessons for good communication of LCA

    • Ten Golden Rules for Applying Life Cycle Information

    • Methodological review and detailed guidance for the life cycle interpretation phase

    • Five misperceptions surrounding the environmental impacts of single-use plastic

    • Strategic sustainability: Creating business value with life cycle analysis

  • Chris Mutel's blog posts. Chris developed the widely used "Brightway" LCA framework (here is a UBC wiki of it). His insights on LCA methodology and the emerging issues within the domain are particularly valuable for LCA practitioners and researchers.

  • Doka LCA (publications and tools from one of the LCA gurus)

• [Recordings]

  • Introduction to the Mass Balance Chain-of-Custody Model and Developing Application for LCA and EPDs

• AI for LCA

  • Addressing critical challenges towards a robust data system for life cycle assessment

  • Large language models for life cycle assessments: Opportunities, challenges, and risks

  • Advances in application of machine learning to life cycle assessment: a literature review

  • Life Cycle Assessment for the Unconventional Construction Materials in Collaboration with a Large Language Model

  • Scope 3 emission estimation using large language models

  • Supply chain emission estimation using large language models

• Lectures

  • Consequential Modelling – in Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (series)

Current topics (by year)

Perpetual

• LCA Discussion Forums (hosted annually by ETH Zürich)

• Awesome LCA: A curated list of awesome LCA resources

• ISIE LCSA Webinar Series on “Data, Algorithms and Tools for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment” | Speaker information summary

  • Dr. Bu Zhao - "A Data-Centric Investigation on the Challenges of Machine Learning Methods for Bridging Life Cycle Inventory Data Gaps. [recording]

  • Dr. Stefano Merciai - "BONSAI IO: An Open-Source Platform for Product Footprinting" & Dr. Yang Qiu - "Developing modeling capabilities in IAM to assess critical mineral supply and demand" [recording]

  • Christian Kongsgaard – "LCAx: A Digital Backbone for Whole Building LCAs" & Dr. Maxime Agez - "Unlocking regionalization in ecoinvent: harnessing trade data for accurate life cycle assessments" [recording]

  • Dr. Fabian Lechtenberg - "Towards Life Cycle Sustainability Optimization (LCSO) with PULPO" [recording]

  • Dr. Mo Li - "CEDA - An open database for corporate scope 3 GHG accounting" [recording]

  • Dr. Paul Wolfram - "Do multi-sector dynamics models and life cycle assessment models agree?" [recording]

2024

• [Workshop] AI4LCA Workshop 2024: Accelerating Sustainability Through AI-Powered Life Cycle Assessment

• Industrial Ecology Day 2024

  • Repository

  • 🤖 Applications of AI in streamlining the LCA modeling [Recording]

  • 🔢 Data, Algorithm, Tools for LCA: Challenges, Opportunities, and Consensus of LCA Data [Recording]

  • 🛠 Next-Gen LCA Tools: Unveiling the Latest Developments and Solutions [Recording]

  • LCAs: Useful policymaking tool or laborious academic method? [Recording]

  • What year is it? Navigating time in LCA [Recording]

• [Webinar] Prof Bernhard Stubbing and Dr Romain Sacchi: Including broad future scenarios in prospective LCA

  • Link to slides

• [Seminar] Addressing grand challenges in life cycle assessment through AI

• [Webinar] ALIGNED and LIGNICOAT | LCA Training On Bio-based Products And Coatings (by ALIGNED project: https://alignedproject.eu/)

  • Common practices for upscaling lab data for conducting LCA

  • Modeling biogenic carbon

  • Project documents: method, tools

• [Webinar] Why scaling product environmental footprints is key for decarbonization

  • The state of product environmental footprints in 2024

  • Role of AI in scaling up Product Footprint calculation (with a demo from CO2 AI)

  • Real-world insights from Quantis on product portfolio transformation

• [Webinar] Applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to understanding the environmental impacts of bioenergy systems: What can we learn from the current practices? (presentation by Dr. Qingshi Tu, hosted by West Coast Energy Guild)