Environmental benchmarks for buildings: needs,challenges and solutions—71st LCA forum,Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,Zürich, 18 June 2019

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The 71st LCA forum was held on 18 June 2019 in Zurich, Switzerland, to discuss the current status and future plans of environmental benchmarking...     

LCA and decision making: when and how to use consequential LCA; 62nd LCA forum,Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,Zürich, 9 September 2016

The 62nd life cycle assessment (LCA) forum was held on 9 September 2016 to discuss the state of research and application with regard to consequential life cycle assessment. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. The state of the art of consequential LCA was presented from different viewpoints. It was pointed out that consequential LCA is more than marginal mixes and avoided burdens and involves causal modelling. It was also said that social responsibility calls for consequential LCA. Currently, different models are used to support decision making. It was suggested to make use of the variety of models to check the conclusiveness of their results and thus the reliability of the LCAs. Current and future implementations of consequential LCI models in background databases and linking algorithms were presented. Several speakers presented consequential LCA case studies covering the sectors energy, transport, housing and mining. Some of the LCA models used in the case studies are complemented with general and partial computable equilibrium models and agent-based models and use environmentally extended input-output data or process-based LCA data. Some of the presentations focused on elements such as constrained production, marginal market mixes and technologies or recycling and system expansion. In three parallel workshops, the needs, contents and methodology, and implementation of consequential LCA approaches were discussed. The participants seemed to generally agree on the basic goal that LCA should be able to reflect the consequences of decisions. The inquiry among the participants showed that the demand for consequential LCA studies is hardly existent. The appropriate implementation of consequential modelling in LCA databases and on the appropriate model to be used in consequential LCA case studies was debated. It revealed a need for further and extensive discussions to be able to reach (minimum) consensus.     

Regionalization in LCA: current status in concepts,software and databases—69th LCA forum,Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,Zurich, 13 September, 2018

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment -     

National environmental footprints and planetary boundaries: from methodology to policy implementation 59th LCA forum,Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,Zürich,June 12, 2015

The 59th LCA forum was held on 12 June, 2015 to discuss the situation with regard to national environmental footprints and their relation to planetary boundaries and to the global carrying capacity. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. Several approaches of how to quantify a safe operating space of the Earth were presented, such as the planetary boundary concept published by Rockström et al. (Nature 462:472–475, 2009) and the ecological footprint (Bastianoni et al. 2013). Several presenters showed how they transformed environmental planetary boundaries to national and per capita allowances. In a research project funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment safe and unsafe areas were determined by combining the level of overshoot, the level of confidence in the information and the trend in the environmental load. The areas of climate change, biodiversity losses and nitrogen losses show a large overshoot on a global level but also from the point of view of Swiss consumption. Other organizations use the planetary boundary concept to identify companies which qualify for environmentally sustainable funds. Finally, life cycle impact assessment methods are being developed using the planetary boundary concept. The weighting step is based on the level of overshoot, which is close to “distance to target” approaches. It was discussed that the nine planetary boundaries face some consistency and operationalisation problems. For instance, land use changes cause biodiversity losses, which is a planetary boundary parameter in its own. Chemical pollution on the other hand is a general topic, for which a quantification approach has to be developed first (load as well as its planetary boundary). The discussion forum showed that individual countries and political entities like the European Union start monitoring their consumption based environmental footprint. Within this context, approaches and concepts are needed to define the environmentally safe operating space. The LCA forum showed that there is still basic research needed to reliably and consistently quantify relevant planetary boundaries (avoiding overlapping indicators) and to transfer these boundaries to per capita allowances.     

Water in life cycle assessment—50th Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment—Zürich, 4 December 2012

Water use, its impacts and management, have become a focus of attention in the past decade in the context of climate change and increasing consumption (in particular of food and agricultural products) due to a growing global population. Many efforts have been made to include water-related issues in life cycle assessment (LCA) in various ways, from the long-standing eutrophication, acidification, and ecotoxicity methods, to the more recent water consumption aspects. Four years on from the first discussion forum on water in LCA (35th Swiss Discussion Forum on LCA, Zürich, 5 June 2008), numerous developments have occurred, resulting in a rich palette of approaches. Significant challenges still remain, related to the complexity of water systems and ecosystems, and certain impacts are still not considered. New challenges have emerged, such as how to fit these “pieces” together to form a coherent and comprehensive approach for assessing the impacts of water use (both degradative and consumptive). Practice has started to apply certain water consumption-related approaches and an early feedback between practitioners and developers is essential to ensure a harmonious further development. The 50th Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment (DF-50) gave a brief overview of the current status of water use in LCA, and then focused on the following topics in three main sessions: (1) a selection of recent research developments in the field of impact assessment modeling; (2) identification of new and remaining challenges where future effort could be concentrated, with a focus on spatial and temporal resolution; (3) and experiences and learnings from application in practice. Furthermore, several short presentations addressed the issues of inventory requirements and comparison of impact assessment approaches. The DF-50 was concluded with a discussion workshop, focusing on four issues: which degree of regionalization is desirable, how to address data gaps in inventories, the comparability of different impact assessment approaches, and the pros and cons of including positive impacts (benefits). Numerous recent developments in life cycle impact assessment have tackled impact pathways, spatial and temporal resolutions, and uncertainties. They have lead to an increase of the completeness of impact assessment, but also of its complexity. Although developments have also occurred in inventories, the gap between impact assessment and inventory is challenging, which in turn limits the applicability of the methods. Regionalization is confirmed as an essential aspect in water footprinting; however, its implementation requires concerted effort by impact assessment developers and software developers. Therefore, even though immense progress has been made, it may be time to think of putting the pieces together in order to simplify the applicability of these tools: enabling the support of improvements in companies and policy is the ultimate goal of LCA. The recordings and presentations of the DF-50 are available for download from www.lcaforum.ch.