What is Life Cycle Assessment

What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

Life cycle thinking is fundamental when assessing the sustainability of products and of organisations.   Life cycle assessment, or LCA, is a quantitative tool that helps implement this thinking.
An LCA facilitates the systematic quantitative assessment of products, both goods and services, in terms of environmental, human health, and resource consumption considerations.  The full life cycle of a product is taken into account– this includes the supply of raw materials, processing, transport, retail, use, as well as end-of-life waste management.

LCA is implemented in 4 phases: goal and scope definition, inventory assessment, impact assessment, and, at each phase, interpretation.

An inventory is compiled for each of the stages in a products life cycle.  This life cycle inventory consists of the resources consumed and the emissions into air, water and soil that are attributable to the product or organisation being assessed.  Building this inventory requires background inventory data for energy, raw materials, etc, such as those found in the European Life Cycle Database (ELCD), the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN), or from other sources outlined in the Platform’s Resource Directories.
The inventory of resources consumed and of emissions that are associated with a product are then analysed using different indicators in the life cycle impact assessment phase.  This analysis is generally conducted in terms of various environmental, human health, as well as resource considerations.  Environmental burdens include, for example, acid rain, summer smog, and climate change.  Indicators are provided for human health in terms of e.g. cancer effects and impacts of particulate matter.  Resources are assessed often in terms of e.g. scarcity and percentage of renewable energy.  The calculation of these indicators is usually facilitated using standard lists of default factors, which are included in the many software tools available to support LCA implementation.

Life cycle assessment has evolved from early studies focused on energy.  In the mid-nineties, in the context of environmental assessment, LCA was internationally standardized (ISO 14040); while already including considerations related to human health and raw materials.  Further guidance is also available for different product groups and sectors.  These LCAs are complemented by Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA).
Further information can be found throughout this Platform, but also here

he ILCD handbook was developed by the Institute for Environment and Sustainability in the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), in co-operation with the Environment DG. It is part of the Commission’s promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns. The ILCD Handbook is in line with international standards and has been established through a series of extensive public and stakeholder consultations.

The JRC has just released a Reference Report (JRC RR) as an umbrella document for the guidance documents of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook. This JRC RR provides overview information on the components of the ILCD Handbook and their interrelationship, as well as supporting documents and tools. For policy developers, contracting officers and scientific officers it provides guidance on referring to the ILCD Handbook and its related components in policy and business context, such as in policies, for service contracts and for research contracts.

The ILCD handbook consists of a set of documents that are in line with the international standards on LCA (ISO 14040/44):

• The General guide for Life Cycle Assessment consists of both a comprehensive, detailed guide as well as a “cook-book”-style guide for experienced LCA practitioners. It covers all aspects of conducting an LCA: defining the objective and target audience, gathering data on resource consumption and emissions that can be attributed to a specific product, calculating the contribution to impacts on the environment, checking the robustness and significance of results and conclusions, and reporting and reviewing to ensure transparency and quality.
• The Specific guide for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data sets builds on the general guide. It provides more detail for the generation of specific types of data. For example, it describes how to create LCI data sets that best reflect the average situation regarding emissions and resource consumption.
• The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) guides provide requirements for assessing the emissions and resource consumption associated with a product in terms of impacts on the environment, human health, and resources depletion. It outlines criteria against which models and indicators for use in LCIA should be evaluated, covering both scientific aspects and stakeholder acceptability. The guides consist of:
  • Analysis of existing Environmental Impact Assessment methodologies for use in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
  • Framework and requirements for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) models and indicators
  • Recommendations for Life Cycle Impact Assessment in the European context describes the indicators and models recommended for Life Cycle Impact Assessment.
  • Updated LCIA Characterisation Factors: The recommendation of LCIA models is complemented with associated characterization factors (CFs) also in ILCD format. A technical note supports the correct use of the CFs and points out some known limitations. The CFs dataset, entailing metadata and errata corrige, is available as a MS excel® files and as ILCD formatted xml files. Please note that, among some other minor updates the CFs have been fine tuned according to different needs the complete list of updates is available in the tool page (LCIA tools section).
• The guide on Review schemes for Life Cycle Assessment presents the minimum requirements for review for life cycle data or assessments for different applications. The guide on Reviewer qualification specifies the requirements on the experiences and expertise of reviewers.