Recent Developments in Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess the environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product¿s life cycle, i.e. from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases to waste management. The methodological development in LCA has been strong and LCA is broadly applied in practice. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments of LCA methods. The focus is on some areas where there has been a strong methodological development during the last years. We also highlight some of the emerging issues. In relation to the Goal and Scope definition we especially discuss the distinction between attributional and consequential LCA. For the Inventory Analysis, this distinction is relevant when discussing system boundaries, data collection and allocation. Also highlighted are developments concerning databases and Input-Output and hybrid LCA. In the sections on Life Cycle Impact Assessment we discuss the characteristics of the modelling as well as some recent developments for specific impact categories and weighting. In relation to the Interpretation the focus is on uncertainty analysis. Finally we discuss recent developments in relation to some of the strengths and weaknesses of LCA.

FINNVEDEN Göran;  HAUSCHILD Michael;  EKVALL Tomas;  GUINÉE Jeroean;  HEIJUNGS Reinout;  HELLWEG Stefanie;  KOEHLER Annette;  PENNINGTON David;  SUH Sangwon; 

2009-10-28

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

JRC47586

0301-4797,   

www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC47586,   

10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.06.018,