Prospective LCA

TA group has been a leader in prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) for over a decade, including leading or playing critical roles in NEEDS and the China Energy Technology Program. Recently, we have focused on the comprehensive integration of future scenarios from integrated assessment and energy system models into large LCA databases. Our open source software tools premise (see video below) and wurst can introduce new technologies, modify direct emissions and relative market shares, and perform fleet or system-wide time series analysis to understand the temporal dynamics of emissions and their impacts. This approach is implemented in our carculator tool, which compares current and future mobility systems over the lifetime of the vehicles. We also chair POLCA, an international working group on best practices in open and reproducible prospective LCA.

A select list of references on the topic are shown below, furthermore, other publications can be found here.

Pizzol, M., Sacchi, R., Köhler, S. and Anderson Erjavec, A. (2021). Non-linearity in the life cycle assessment of scalable and emerging technologies. Frontiers in Sustainability, 1, 611593, 16 pp., doi: 10.3389/frsus.2020.611593

Cox, B., Bauer, C., Mendoza Beltran, A., van Vuuren, D. P.,  Mutel, C. M. (2020). Life cycle environmental and cost comparison of current and future passenger cars under different energy scenarios, Applied Energy, Vol. 269, 115021, doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115021

Vandepaer, L., Panos, E., Bauer, C. and Amor, B. (2020). Energy System Pathways with Low Environmental Impacts and Limited Costs: Minimizing Climate Change Impacts Produces Environmental Cobenefits and Challenges in Toxicity and Metal Depletion Categories. Environmental Science & Technologies, doi: 10.1021/acs.est.9b06484

Cox, B., Mutel, C., Bauer, C., Mendoza Beltran, A. and van Vuuren, D. (2018). The uncertain environmental footprint of current and future battery electric vehicles, Environmental Science & Technology, doi:10.1021/acs.est.8b00261

Volkart, K., Mutel, C. and Panos, E. (2018). Integrating life cycle assessment and energy system modelling: Methodology and application to the world energy scenarios, Sustainable Production and Consumption, doi: 10.1016/j.spc.2018.07.001