What is LCA? - 2-0 LCA

New to LCA? Want to know what it is, whether it's relevant for you, and what's particularly important to know before you get started? Then you've found the right place. Here, we'll guide you through the fundamental concept behind LCA and tell you the most important things you need to know to conduct the right LCA so you can use it to understand your impact on the world.

If you're already familiar with LCA or need assistance, read about how we work with it here: https://2-0-lca.com/solutions/life-cycle-assessment/. Life cycle assessment is the backbone of our services, a science-based method to quantify the environmental impacts of producing and using a product or service throughout its life cycle. We specialize in advancing LCA methodologies and providing robust data solutions for environmental and sustainability assessments. We can guide you through the fundamental concepts of LCA, its importance, and how it drives sustainable development.

What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

Every decision leaves a consequence on our environment, often in ways that aren't visible. LCA offers an internationally standardised methodology to evaluate these impacts across the entire lifespan of a product or service through its inputs and outputs. From "cradle to grave," LCA considers all stages: raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life treatment (recycling, disposal, etc.).

Importantly, LCA does not focus solely on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. It also considers a broad range of environmental impact categories, including resource depletion, human health impacts, and ecosystem damage.

By assessing multiple dimensions, LCA provides a comprehensive view of environmental performance, enabling informed decision-making about where the most significant environmental consequences occur and where improvement efforts will be most effective.

Why is LCA important?

Every Decision Leaves a Mark
LCA provides a comprehensive view of where your product's most significant environmental impacts occur throughout its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal. Remember that everything you do is a choice with consequences. Even doing nothing is a choice. This detailed insight helps organisations prioritise efforts and direct investments toward initiatives that achieve meaningful environmental improvements.
Informs Meaningful Investments and Drives Strategic Innovation
With robust data, design and R&D teams can make informed decisions, evaluating alternatives that reduce environmental impacts while aligning with business goals. LCA's comprehensive perspective enables your business to identify opportunities, benchmark performance, and maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly changing market.
Ensures Transparency
LCA provides quantitative insights that help your company stay ahead of evolving environmental regulations and ensure compliance. By analysing your entire supply chain, it delivers actionable intelligence to guide procurement decisions, foster supplier collaboration, and enhance operational transparency.
Optimises Resource Management and Strengthens Market Position
By examining material, water, and energy use in detail, LCA uncovers opportunities to optimise operations, reduce waste, and lower costs while improving efficiency. Incorporating LCA into your strategy demonstrates a commitment to responsible business practices, building trust with customers, investors, partners, and employees.

The pillars of a robust LCA: standards and methodology

For an LCA to deliver reliable and comparable results, it must adhere to internationally recognized standards and employ appropriate methodologies. This ensures that the assessment is conducted rigorously and that its findings are credible.

Key LCA standards: ISO 14040 and ISO 14044

The primary international standards governing LCA are the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 series. These standards provide a framework and guidelines for conducting an LCA.

ISO 14040: This standard outlines the principles and framework for LCA, defining its purpose, scope, and the main phases involved.
ISO 14044: This standard provides more detailed requirements and guidelines for conducting an LCA, covering data collection, impact assessment, and interpretation.

Adherence to these ISO standards is critical for the credibility and acceptance of any LCA study.

LCA Standards

Choosing the right method

An LCA is only as valuable as the question it answers. Are you comparing product alternatives, identifying hotspots, or understanding the consequences of a decision? Without a clear goal, you risk ending up with an analysis that describes the past rather than guiding the future. A well-designed LCA should focus on causality and the actual consequences of your choices, so it can provide the decision support you need. When conducting an LCA, one important decision involves choosing between two main methodological approaches: attributional LCA (ALCA) and consequential LCA (CLCA). Understanding these differences is essential for selecting the right method, ensuring your study answers the questions that matter most for your specific objective.

Attributional LCA (ALCA)

ALCA aims to describe the environmental impacts “attributed” to a product or service within a specific supply chain. It typically models the physical flows to and from a product system, representing average or typical production processes. ALCA answers questions like "What is the environmental footprint of this product as it currently exists?" In other words, Attributional LCA answers how the environmental footprint of this product was in the past or how it currently exists.

When to use ALCA:

Reporting in compliance with specific attributional standards
When reporting environmental impacts for a specific product system over a defined period, particularly to meet regulatory or industry requirements like Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), Greenhouse Gas Protocol or Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).

Consequential LCA (CLCA)

CLCA, on the other hand, aims to model the environmental consequences of a decision or a change in the market. It focuses on how market demands and production systems would adjust if a product system were introduced or changed. CLCA answers questions like "What are the environmental implications of increasing the production of this product, or introducing a new alternative?" In other words, Consequential LCA answers how the environmental footprint of a product will be in the future based on factors like how the market changes.

When to use CLCA:

Change-oriented decision making
For policy analysis and strategic decisions where you need to understand the effects of a potential change, or for internal decisions aimed at reducing future environmental impacts.
Communication and marketing
To provide stakeholders and especially customers with information when deciding whether to use the client’s technology or a competitor’s technology.
Product design and improvement
Identifying hotspots in the life cycle of a product or process to guide the search for improvements in the design phase.
Evaluating emerging technologies
When assessing and evaluating new and emerging technologies, innovative products, or novel services that are being considered for introduction into the market or into your organization's operations.
Tracking improvements over time
Focusing on the improvements made over time resulting from past decisions.

While both methods have their place, CLCA is often more powerful for decision-making aimed at future impact reduction. It helps identify truly impactful interventions by focusing on market responses. ALCAs are often used for used for annual accounting and reporting, but there is a risk that the results by mistake are also used decision-making where two or more product systems are compared, even if it is clearly stated that the attributional LCA is not suitable for that purpose.

It is important to know that it is also possible to conduct a CLCA alongside the ALCA, so that the differences are clearly visible and explainable to the user, and so that the package can be used for both decision-making and reporting without risks of greenwashing challenges.

The four phases of an LCA study

Regardless of whether you choose an attributional or consequential approach, every LCA follows a structured four-phase process:

Goal and scope definition: Clearly define the purpose of the study, the product system to be assessed, the functional unit (the reference flows for comparison), system boundaries, and the environmental impacts to be evaluated.
Life Cycle Inventory (LCI): This phase involves collecting data on all inputs (energy, raw materials) and outputs (products, by-products, emissions to air, water, soil, waste) associated with each stage of the product's life cycle. This can be a data-intensive process requiring access to robust databases.
Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA): The LCI data are translated into environmental impacts using specific characterization factors. This phase quantifies the potential environmental effects, such as global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, and resource depletion. LCIA may also include steps like normalisation (comparing results to reference values, such as total impacts in a region) and weighting (assigning relative importance to different impact categories based on value choices or priorities).
Life Cycle Interpretation: The results from the LCIA phase are reviewed and interpreted in relation to the initial goal and scope. This phase includes identifying significant environmental aspects and drawing conclusions and recommendations.

Completing a comprehensive LCA can be a complex undertaking, requiring specialized knowledge and tools. This is where our services and expertise come into play.

Navigating the world of LCA

LCA requires navigating a complex landscape of standards, methodologies, and reporting frameworks. Knowing where to start, or how to align your efforts effectively, can be challenging. Experienced guidance makes the process more manageable, helping clarify priorities and ensuring your approach is both credible and practical. Whether you're exploring LCA for the first time or deepening existing practices, expert support provides valuable perspective and simplifies the path forward. Read more about how we can help with your LCA here: https://2-0-lca.com/solutions/life-cycle-assessment/

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Do you want to know more?

We also provide tailored LCA training courses for various skill levels, from beginners to advanced practitioners. Our courses cover fundamental LCA principles, software application, and advanced methodological topics, ensuring you gain the practical skills needed to conduct effective assessments. This can also be a good starting point before embarking on an LCA, as it allows you to make informed decisions.

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