Guidance for applying absolute environmental sustainability assessment on activities at different scales (BETA version)
Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment (AESA) involves comparing the environmental burdens of individual activities to planetary boundaries and other environmental carrying capacities to understand what it takes for these activities to be environmentally sustainable. AESA has attracted great interest, but the lack of a harmonized and comprehensive guidance document has inhibited its practical application.
Here, we present the beta version of the first practical guidance for how to apply AESA to activities at different scales. Based on existing academic studies, our guidance structure AESA in three main phases (environmental impact estimation, carrying capacities allocation and results interpretation), comprising nine steps and eleven sub-steps. The presentation of each (sub-)step is supported by three cross-cutting case studies covering a sample of residential buildings in Denmark, a major Indian cement company and the total consumption of the European Union.
Our guidance builds on existing environmental accounting guidelines and standards, such as the International Life Cycle Data (ILCD) Handbook for product-level life cycle assessment and the company-level Greenhouse Gas Protocol and highlights where AESA requires a divergence from the existing practice. The guidance is not normative around the unique carrying capacity allocation step, and instead offers a broad overview of existing methods, choices and considerations.
A key aim of this beta guidance is to collect feedback from the user community, after which a consolidated guidance document will be published in early 2026. Please follow this link to submit your feedback: https://www.survey-xact.dk/LinkCollector?key=Q8NNSDMMU695.
BJØRN Anders;
PAULILLO Andrea;
SANYE MENGUAL Esther;
DE LAURENTIIS Valeria;
VEA Eldbjorg;
HAUSCHILD Michael Zwicky;
SALA Serenella;
2025-05-07
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC142099
978-92-68-27123-0 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40307,
OP KJ-01-25-263-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC142099,
10.2760/7677803 (online),
Additional supporting files
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