Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) represents a comprehensive evaluation framework that accounts for all Costs and Benefits, both internal and external, associated with a Product system throughout its entire life cycle. This holistic assessment methodology integrates economic, environmental, and social dimensions to provide a complete picture of sustainability performance.
The LCSA framework is structured around two complementary but distinct analytical components. The first component is Environmental Life Cycle Costing (LCC), which addresses the Internalised costs and benefits. These are the direct financial flows that are reflected in market prices and captured within conventional economic accounting. The LCC component traces all costs borne by actors within the product system, including those Externalities anticipated to be internalised within the decision-relevant timeframe through policy interventions, taxes, or market mechanisms.
The second component is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which quantifies the externalities that remain outside market transactions. This encompasses the Impacts on the social, biophysical, and economic Environment that are not included or internalised in the price of the Products from the product system causing the impacts. These impacts may be expressed in physical units or converted to monetary values through valuation techniques, enabling comparison across different types of environmental and social consequences.
A critical methodological consideration in LCSA is the prevention of double-counting. Externalities anticipated to be internalised in the decision-relevant future must be allocated exclusively to either the LCC or the LCA component, but never to both simultaneously. This ensures that the total assessment accurately reflects the true magnitude of costs and benefits without artificial inflation through duplicate accounting of the same impacts.
