transport is associated with higher impacts on

human health and ecosystems (Fig. 1).

REVIEW
How Is LCA Applied and What Are
Its Potential Future Uses?
Emerging approaches, challenges and The typical use of LCA has been to assess and
improve specific product systems (Fig. 2A). Many
opportunities in life cycle assessment product LCAs are conducted to support corporate
internal decision-making, such as for eco-design
of products, process optimizations, supply-chain
Stefanie Hellweg1* and Llorenç Milà i Canals2 management, and marketing and strategic de-
cisions. LCA has particularly high leverage at
In the modern economy, international value chains—production, use, and disposal the early stage of product and process design,
of goods—have global environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims when there is still the freedom to make substan-
to track these impacts and assess them from a systems perspective, identifying tial changes. However, today its application is
strategies for improvement without burden shifting. We review recent developments in much broader. Companies are using LCA to map
LCA, including existing and emerging applications aimed at supporting environmentally the key drivers of impact of their entire product
informed decisions in policy-making, product development and procurement, and portfolios (Fig. 2B) (5) and thus to direct their
consumer choices. LCA constitutes a viable screening tool that can pinpoint improvement strategies. Increasingly, companies

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on June 21, 2015

environmental hotspots in complex value chains, but we also caution that completeness are using LCA results to report on key environ-
in scope comes at the price of simplifications and uncertainties. Future advances of mental aspects on a corporate level, presenting
LCA in enhancing regional detail and accuracy as well as broadening the assessment the areas across the value chain where product
to economic and social aspects will make it more relevant for producers and portfolios generate impacts and outlining how
consumers alike. the companies are tackling these. This can be

T
beyond the company gates, through improvement
he complex global supply chains, produc- and the system boundaries could include the in products and technologies, through synergies
tion technologies, and consumption patterns following: resource extraction and processing, with industrial neighbors by exchanging mate-
of the modern economy cause numerous the manufacture of the vehicle and infrastruc- rials and energy (6), and through better collabo-
environmental impacts. To identify the most ture (rail tracks or roads), the operation of the ration with other actors in the value chain. As an
effective improvement strategies and avoid vehicle, and last, disposal (Fig. 1). The second example, LCAs of clothes-washing have demon-
burden shifting from one environmental impact phase, inventory analysis, compiles inputs and strated that the largest improvement potential
to another, all impacts occurring throughout the outputs for each process in the life cycle and lies in lowering the washing temperature (7).
entire value chain (supply chain plus use and dis- sums them across the whole system. Typically, Cooperation of multiple actors is needed to re-
posal phases) should be accounted for. This is the several hundreds of emissions and resources alize this benefit; for example, washing-powder
goal of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a method to are quantified. manufacturers need to produce detergents that
quantitatively assess the environmental impacts In the third phase, life-cycle impact assessment clean effectively at cold temperature; washing-
of goods and processes from “cradle to grave.” (LCIA), emissions and resources are grouped ac- machine producers need to manufacture machines
LCA models cause-effect relationships in the cording to their impact categories and converted that allow selecting cold washing temperatures;
environment and thus helps to understand the to common impact units to make them compa- and consumers need to change their washing
environmental consequences of human actions. rable. For instance, CO2 and CH4 emissions can behavior. LCA can reveal whether collaboration
LCA is an important decision-support tool that both be expressed as CO2-equivalent emissions by between different actors would lead to a greater
among other functions, allows companies to using their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate benefit than that of single-actor action, but making
benchmark and optimize the environmental Change (IPCC) Global Warming Potentials (this the collaboration happen also requires social and
performance of products or for authorities to impact category, climate change, is almost iden- economic conditions to be fulfilled.
design policies for sustainable consumption and tical to the so-called carbon footprint). Interna- In the area of sustainable consumption and
production. tional consensus has been reached on both the production, “top-down” studies of national econ-
data and the modeling principles used for some omies help to pinpoint crucial areas of consump-
How Does LCA work? impact categories, such as for the assessment tion and drivers of environmental impacts (Fig.
The currently accepted definition of LCA is of human- and eco-toxicity (2). For other im- 2D). For example, housing, mobility, and food
the “compilation and evaluation of the inputs, pact categories—such as impact of land and wa- (specifically, heating and cooling of buildings, car
outputs, and potential environmental impacts ter use, acidification, and eutrophication—diverse and air travel, and meat and dairy consumption)
of a product system throughout its life cycle,” methods exist, and international initiatives, such are responsible for the largest share of most en-
which typically occurs in four steps (1). The first as the United Nations Environment Programme vironmental impacts in Europe (8). More detailed
phase is the description of the goal and scope, (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and “bottom-up” studies of single products or product
which includes defining the objectives of the Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative are work- groups have also helped to determine that key
study and setting the system boundaries. In the ing toward global consensus-building on impact drivers for impacts may not be linked to the life-
LCA of freight transport, for instance, the com- indicators (3, 4). Weighting between impact cat- cycle stages most commonly associated with high
parison of rail and road transport to select the egories facilitates decision-making but, according impacts, such as in the case of packaging, which
most sustainable option could form one objective, to the International Organization for Standard- was shown to be of minor importance with re-
ization (ISO) (1), is not allowed for comparative gard to the total greenhouse-gas emissions of
1
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich, Institute of
assertions communicated to the public because food products in the UK (9). Such information
Environmental Engineering, Ecological Systems Design, HPZ it involves subjective judgments. The final phase enables the determination of the biggest impact-
E 31.2, John-von-Neumann-Weg 9, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland. is the interpretation of the inventory and impact reduction potentials and the prioritization of
2
Sustainable Consumption and Production, Division for assessment results in order to answer the objec- political efforts. For instance, the European Com-
Technology, Industry and Economics, United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), 15 Rue de Milan, 75009
tives of the study. In the example of freight trans- mission’s Energy-using Products Directive (10),
Paris, France. port, outcomes obtained from an LCA include the which was built on the knowledge gathered
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] finding that as compared with rail transport, road through LCA studies, identified the use phase of

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household appliances as the key driver for their and even entire urban settlements (18, 19). The showed that depending on the production con-
environmental impact and now requires elec- results show that energy use within the building ditions, biofuels from agricultural products may
tronic products to carry an energy label. dominates impacts in most impact categories. be responsible for larger environmental impacts
New policy initiatives go a step further by aim- Extra insulation material decreases overall life- than conventional fuels, mainly because of land-
ing to generalize the life-cycle approach in all cycle impacts in colder climates, although compar- transformation issues. This study led the Swiss gov-
consumption sectors, through harmonization of isons of low-energy to self-sufficient houses have ernment to release a law requiring an LCA study
life-cycle–based information on a variety of impact shown that there is a tipping point at which fur- of all nonwaste-derived biofuels, which would need
categories to be displayed in product labeling ther material use does not pay off any longer (20). to demonstrate environmental superiority over
(11, 12). One challenge is how this information can Increasing the share of renewable energy supply conventional fuels before any tax exemptions are
be communicated to consumers in a simple and systems and decreasing the per capita living space granted (26). On a local level, mathematical opti-
understandable manner, without hiding uncer- are measures with large environmental leverage mization has been applied to propose environmen-
tainties. Data gaps present another challenge. (18). Both the impacts and the environmentally tally optimal solutions for regional energy supply
Information on complete assortments of products optimal design also depend on building technol- (27) and may be extended to larger regions in the
might enable the issuing of environmental score- ogies, local conditions, and the behavior of oc- future. LCA is also used to assess scenarios of en-
cards that store information on consumer-specific cupants (17, 21). ergy supply mixes, to help design sustainable ener-
purchases and provide a hotspot analysis of pur- LCA is particularly suited to support decisions gy systems (28). A future application could be to use
chases in the future (Fig. 2C). Such information in waste management. For instance, the European LCA to identify desirable scenarios and, on this ba-
would allow consumers to track the impacts of Waste Framework Directive (22) requires the use sis, use backcasting to define appropriate policies.
their purchases and to possibly reduce or offset of LCA to identify cases in which it is reasonable LCAs are also applied to assess new technol-
them. Offsets have already been incorporated in to deviate from the classical waste hierarchy (avoid, ogies and promote proactive action, such as with
some labels for greenhouse gas emissions but reuse, recycle, recover, and landfill). Models and nanotechnology (29). However, a review of LCA
may be difficult to implement for other impacts, software tools for assessing the environmental studies on nanostructured products (30) showed
such as biodiversity loss (13). A key role is held by impacts of recycling and disposal options are avail- that almost all studies neglect nanoparticle emis-
retailers, who are in direct contact with both able (23) and have been applied in a range of sions and their specific effects, thus missing a
consumers and producers and can serve as an cases to environmentally optimize waste man- potential key concern with regard to human and
information hub. In addition to product labeling agement (24). A challenge for future research will ecosystem health. LCA relies on the knowledge
(14), some retailers use environmental information be to widen the system boundaries beyond waste generated in related fields (such as environmen-
to guide their internal decisions in supply-chain treatment and recycling to cover integrated re- tal risk assessment), and data gaps are a prob-
management so as to only offer products that meet source management, so as not to miss improve- lem at an early stage of technology development.
minimum environmental standards (15). ment potentials through waste prevention and Another important issue is that a comparison
Many LCAs have been carried out in the build- recycling-friendly product design. between new and mature technologies needs to
ing sector, by urban designers, property developers, LCA has been instrumental in policy-making be corrected for upscaling and learning effects,
architects, engineers, and consultants. Environ- in the energy sector. LCA can provide informa- which typically reduce the environmental impacts
mental Product Declarations (16) have become tion on environmental benefits and costs before as a function of cumulated production (31, 32).
effective mechanisms to share data about the en- money is invested in new energy, grid, and stor- Last, prospective technology assessments also
vironmental profiles of materials and semifinished age infrastructure. For example, biofuels were need models of the future industrial economy
products. Existing studies also assess whole build- once widely considered as an environmentally (32), which so far are only available for electricity
ing systems, considering all life-cycle stages (17) benign source of energy until an LCA study (25) generation (28).

1. Goal and scope definition 2. Inventory analysis 3. Life-cycle impact assessment

Technical inputs and outputs Climate change

of all processes Human
Ozone depletion health
Emissions (to air, water, and soil) Photochemical
ozone creation
Resource use (land, water,
Resource Human toxicity
fossiles, metals) Biodiversity/
extraction Ecotoxicity ecosystem
Eutrophication services
100 %
Acidification
Land stress Natural
75 Water stress resources
Disposal Production
Resource depletion
50
100 % Rest
75
25 PM10
50
25 NOX
0 0 Accidents
Use Road Rail Road Rail Road Rail Road Rail Road Rail
CO2 NOX PM10 Human Ecosystem CO2
health health

4. Interpretation

Fig. 1. The four phases of LCA for the example of freight transportation. Comparing road and rail transport for a specific freight transport chain
[data are from (68)]. Exemplary inventory and impact assessment results (68) for three emissions and two damage categories, normalized to road
transportation. Further details are available in the supplementary materials.

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 In view of the growing interest in applying reproducibility and avoid hidden manipulation. considered, and these guidelines may hamper the
LCA, enhanced coverage of inventory data and Moreover, access to LCA databases should pref- use of up-to-date LCIA methods. Enabling a
impacts is required to be able to provide answers erably be open, but this is impeded by the fact widespread application with “stable” methods,
to situations arising from increasingly complex that setting up and, particularly, maintaining the without paralyzing the relevant methodological
production and consumption systems. A plethora quality of data are a costly task. Developments in developments, remains a challenging task.
of data must be processed on all phases of the life impact assessment aiming at a better represen-
cycle, including consumer behavior information tation of cause-effect chains in the environment Emerging Approaches and
for the use phase. “Big Data” efforts, such as those are also under way. At the same time, however, the Challenges in LCA
devoted to analyzing consumer habit information, mainstream application of LCA requires simplifi- LCA results can have high uncertainties because
constitute a promising knowledge-generation hub cations and standardization to enable consistent of the large amounts of measured and simulated
(33). There is also a practical challenge relating to and easy use in practice (35). The European Commis- data and the simplified modeling of complex en-
the access and interoperability of life-cycle inven- sion made an attempt in this regard, defining vironmental cause-effect chains. Recent studies
tory databases. Consistent data-quality guidelines “best practice” in impact assessment (4). Although have highlighted the contribution that system as-
are, if at all, only applied within individual data- on the one hand this is very helpful to harmonize sumptions and value choices can also make to
bases (34), but not among them. Transparency and LCA studies with regard to impact assessment, overall uncertainty (36, 37). A number of quantita-
independent reviews are also crucial (1) to allow only LCIA methods before early 2009 were tive uncertainty assessments are available (38) but

A. Product level LCA B. Organizational LCA

C. Consumer/lifestyle LCA D. Country LCA

Fig. 2. The expanding nature of LCA applications. (A) Original product-based scope. (B) Organizational company LCA. (C) Consumer LCA (analyzing
consumption patterns and lifestyles). (D) National-level assessments. One of the main goals in all of these application levels is the identification of
environmental hotspots, which may then guide decisions on product improvement, corporate sustainability strategy (including supplier selection),
consumer lifestyle and procurement options, or national sustainable consumption and production policy-setting.

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 6 JUNE 2014 • VOL 344 ISSUE 6188 1111

are rarely used in practice. One of the key questions of ecosystems. However, acquiring spatial data for land-use impacts (43–46), water consumption
is, how much uncertainty is acceptable, depending constitutes a challenge. Companies may know their (47–50), eutrophication (51, 52), and noise (53).
on the application? In some cases, rough estimates immediate suppliers, but only in exceptional cases The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
of input values can be enough to identify supply- do they know the whole supply chain and con- has helped in the implementation of region-
chain hotspots (39), but for other applications, sumer (or post-consumer) phase. When spatial alization in LCA. An assessment of electricity
such as product comparisons (37), the demands details have not been available, average mar- generation, for example, shows that regionaliza-
for more accurate values are higher. For some im- ket mixes have been used as an approximation. tion can indeed be important (Fig. 3) (54) and
pact categories such as toxicity, very large differ- Global production mixes and trade are well known should be considered, for example, when rede-
ences in inventory results are needed to statistically and documented for some products, such as signing the electricity supply mix.
differentiate product systems, whereas for other electricity (34), but unfortunately, this is not Regionalization makes LCA more relevant, but
categories, differences of a factor of two or less the case for many other products. However, matching the regionalized impact-assessment
may be enough (40). LCA practitioners should al- international production and trade data are methods to regionalized emissions and resource
ways attempt to manage the decision-maker’s becoming readily available on an industrial- flows is still very much a challenge. Although pilot
expectations and clarify that LCA is not always a sector level. Recent studies combine national research software systems are capable of doing
tool to provide a single answer, but rather one production data with data on international trade this (54), it has yet to be implemented in commer-
that permits comprehensive understanding of a flows (41, 42) and are thus able to analyze the cial LCA software. An open question is, which is the
problem and its possible solutions. overall footprints of consuming nations, includ- most appropriate spatial (and temporal) resolution
Recent studies have aimed at reducing uncer- ing the impacts occurring outside the national of data (54)? Inventory data are mostly available on
tainties in LCA by mapping and assessing value boundaries. To compare the environmental im- the country level, with only some exceptions of
chains and impacts in a regionalized manner. Re- pacts between different locations of resource ex- finer geographical resolution [such as for agri-
gionalized assessments increase the accuracy by traction or emission, regionalized impact-assessment cultural processes (55)]. Impact-assessment methods
considering site-specific production conditions as methods need to be applied. Operational methods often need a different geographical resolution, em-
well as differences in transport and the sensitivity with global coverage became recently available bracing the nature of the impact rather than political

Fig. 3. Illustration of regionalized LCA of 4457 A. Impacts (three categories) of electricity provided to the grid
U.S. power plants. (A) Impact for 1 kilowatt-hour
(kWh) electricity provided to the grid for three im- 104 Impact per kWh, ratio to grid mix
pact categories, normalized to the average impact
of U.S. power production. The breadth of the
“violins” reflects the frequency of data points. For 102
impacts of climate change, differences in the tech-
nology explain the variation in impact within each
power-plant type. For the other impact categories,
regionalized impact assessment adds to the varia- 1
bility between power plants in addition to technol-
ogy differences. This is illustrated by (B) the map,
which shows total ecosystem impact from water
10–2
consumption per power plant (total annual pro-
duction). Impacts mainly occur in water-scarce re-
gions with large ecosystem sensitivity. Acidification
impacts of hydro and nuclear are not shown 10–4
because they were negligible. Further details are Coal Gas Hydro Nuclear Other Coal Gas Hydro Nuclear Other Coal Gas Other
Ecosystem impact Climate change Acidification
available in the supplementary materials. All data
from water consumption
are from (54).

B. Ecosystem impact from water consumption per power plant

Nuclear
Gas
Coal
Hydro

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SCIENCE sciencemag.org 6 JUNE 2014 • VOL 344 ISSUE 6188 1113

 Emerging approaches, challenges and opportunities in life cycle
assessment
Stefanie Hellweg and Llorenç Milà i Canals
Science 344, 1109 (2014);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1248361

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