LightImpact: An open-source model for quantifying energy savings of lightweight vehicles in life cycle assessments

The body of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature is vast and has grown over the last decade at a dauntingly rapid rate. Many LCAs have been published on the same or very similar technologies or products, in some cases leading to hundreds of publications. One result is the impression among decision makers that LCAs are inconclusive, owing to perceived and real variability in published estimates of life cycle impacts. Despite the extensive available literature and policy need formore conclusive assessments, only modest attempts have been made to synthesize previous research. A significant challenge to doing so are differences in characteristics of the considered technologies and inconsistencies in methodological choices (e.g., system boundaries, coproduct allocation, and impact assessment methods) among the studies that hamper easy comparisons and related decision support. An emerging trend is meta-analysis of a set of results from LCAs, which has the potential to clarify the impacts of a particular technology, process, product, or material and produce more robust and policy-relevant results. Meta-analysis in this context is defined here as an analysis of a set of published LCA results to estimate a single or multiple impacts for a single technology or a technology category, either in a statisticalmore » sense (e.g., following the practice in the biomedical sciences) or by quantitative adjustment of the underlying studies to make them more methodologically consistent. One example of the latter approach was published in Science by Farrell and colleagues (2006) clarifying the net energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of ethanol, in which adjustments included the addition of coproduct credit, the addition and subtraction of processes within the system boundary, and a reconciliation of differences in the definition of net energy metrics. Such adjustments therefore provide an even playing field on which all studies can be considered and at the same time specify the conditions of the playing field itself. Understanding the conditions under which a meta-analysis was conducted is important for proper interpretation of both the magnitude and variability in results. This special supplemental issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology includes 12 high-quality metaanalyses and critical reviews of LCAs that advance understanding of the life cycle environmental impacts of different technologies, processes, products, and materials. Also published are three contributions on methodology and related discussions of the role of meta-analysis in LCA. The goal of this special supplemental issue is to contribute to the state of the science in LCA beyond the core practice of producing independent studies on specific products or technologies by highlighting the ability of meta-analysis of LCAs to advance understanding in areas of extensive existing literature. The inspiration for the issue came from a series of meta-analyses of life cycle GHG emissions from electricity generation technologies based on research from the LCA Harmonization Project of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, which also provided financial support for this special supplemental issue. (See the editorial from this special supplemental issue [Lifset 2012], which introduces this supplemental issue and discusses the origins, funding, peer review, and other aspects.) The first article on reporting considerations for meta-analyses/critical reviews for LCA is from Heath and Mann (2012), who describe the methods used and experience gained in NREL's LCA Harmonization Project, which produced six of the studies in this special supplemental issue. Their harmonization approach adapts key features of systematic review to identify and screen published LCAs followed by a meta-analytical procedure to adjust published estimates to ones based on a consistent set of methods and assumptions to allow interstudy comparisons and conclusions to be made. In a second study on methods, Zumsteg and colleagues (2012) propose a checklist for a standardized technique to assist in conducting and reporting systematic reviews of LCAs, including meta-analysis, that is based on a framework used in evidence-based medicine. Widespread use of such a checklist would facilitate planning successful reviews, improve the ability to identify systematic reviews in literature searches, ease the ability to update content in future reviews, and allow more transparency of methods to ease peer review and more appropriately generalize findings. Finally, Zamagni and colleagues (2012) propose an approach, inspired by a meta-analysis, for categorizing main methodological topics, reconciling diverging methodological developments, and identifying future research directions in LCA. Their procedure involves the carrying out of a literature review on articles selected according to predefined criteria.« less

Who Cares About Life Cycle Assessment?

Addressing the social life cycle inventory analysis data gap: Insights from a case study of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Feeding a growing, increasingly affluent population while limiting environmental pressures of food production is a central challenge for society. Understanding the location and magnitude of food production is key to addressing this challenge because pressures vary substantially across food production types. Applying data and models from life cycle assessment with the methodologies for mapping cumulative environmental impacts of human activities (hereafter cumulative impact mapping) provides a powerful approach to spatially map the cumulative environmental pressure of food production in a way that is consistent and comprehensive across food types. However, these methodologies have yet to be combined. By synthesizing life cycle assessment and cumulative impact mapping methodologies, we provide guidance for comprehensively and cumulatively mapping the environmental pressures (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, spatial occupancy, and freshwater use) associated with food production systems. This spatial approach enables quantification of current and potential future environmental pressures, which is needed for decision makers to create more sustainable food policies and practices.

Big Data in Life Cycle Assessment

Territorial Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): What exactly is it about? A proposal towards using a common terminology and a research agenda

Production and consumption of goods entails generation of obvious and several unseen environmental externalities and burden. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) essentially includes a detailed analysis of the life cycle of a product or a process in relation to externalities generated [Yuracko and Morris, 2001]. One of the first terms used for such an exercise was Life Cycle Analysis . Recently, two terms viz., Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) , apart from Life Cycle Inventoiy (LCI) have also been in use. This analysis is aimed at assessing burdens created by the product or process on the environment. LCA normally centres on 1) determination of associated flows of energy and materials; 2) relating environmental impacts and stresses to various stages of production process and consumption of the product; and 3) identification of appropriate interventions to improve environmentally significant attributes. Efforts are currently focused on defining boundaries of analysis and harmonization of approaches for carrying out LCAs [Graedel and Allenby, 1995]. Whichever name is used to describe it, LCA is considered as a useful tool to potentially assist regulators formulate environmental legislation, help manufacturers analyze their processes and improve their products. Like most tools, it must be used with certain clarity of purpose. Life Cycle Analysis and Assessment is being expanded lately to lend support to the development of eco-labelling schemes, which are operating or planned in a number of countries around the world.

Applied life cycle assessment (LCA) studies often lead to a comparison of rather few alternatives; we call this the “ad hoc LCA approach.” This can seem surprising since applied LCAs normally cover countless options for variations and derived potentials for improvements in a product life cycle. In this paper, we will suggest an alternative approach to the ad hoc approach, which more systematically addresses the many possible variations to identify the most promising. We call it the “structural LCA approach.” The goals of this paper are (1) to provide basic guidelines for the structural approach, including an easy expansion of the LCA space; (2) to show that the structural LCA approach can be used for different types of optimization in LCA; and (3) to improve the transparency of the LCA work. The structural approach is based on the methodology “design of experiments” (Montgomery 2005). Through a biodiesel well-to-wheel study, we demonstrate a generic approach of applying explanatory variables and corresponding impact categories within the LCA methodology. Explanatory variables are product system variables that can influence the environmental impacts from the system. Furthermore, using the structural approach enables two different possibilities for optimization: (1) single-objective optimization (SO) based on response surface methodology (Montgomery 2005) and (2) multiobjective optimization (MO) by the hypervolume estimation taboo search (HETS) method. HETS enables MO for more than two or three objectives. Using SO, the explanatory variable “use of residual straw from fields” is, by far, the explanatory variable that can contribute with the highest decrease of climate change potential. For the respiratory inorganics impact category, the most influencing explanatory variable is found to be the use of different alcohol types (bioethanol or petrochemical methanol) in biodiesel production. Using MO, we found the Pareto front based on 5 different life cycle pathways which are nondominated solutions out of 66 different analyzed solutions. Given that there is a fixed amount of resources available for the LCA practitioner, it becomes a prioritizing problem whether to apply the structural LCA approach or not. If the decision maker only has power to change a single explanatory variable, it might not be beneficial to apply the structural LCA approach. However, if the decision maker (such as decision makers at the societal level) has power to change more explanatory variables, then the structural LCA approach seems beneficial for quantifying and comparing the potentials for environmental improvement between the different explanatory variables in an LCA system and identifying the overall most promising product system configurations among the chosen PWs. The implementation of the structural LCA approach and the derived use of SO and MO have been successfully achieved and demonstrated in the present paper. In addition, it is demonstrated that the structural LCA approach can lead to more transparent LCAs since the potentially most important explanatory variables which are used to model the LCAs are explicitly presented through the structural LCA approach. The suggested structural approach is a new approach to LCA and it seems to be a promising approach for searching or screening product systems for environmental optimization potentials. In the presented case, the design has been a rather simple full factorial design. More complicated problems or designs, such as fractional designs, nested designs, split plot designs, and/or unbalanced data, in the context of LCA could be investigated further using the structural approach.

Circular utilization of urban tree waste contributes to the mitigation of climate change and eutrophication

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) presents a relatively new approach, which allows comprehensive environmental consequences analysis of a product system over its entire life. This analysis is increasingly being used in the industry, as a tool for investigation of the influence of the product system on the environment, and serves as a protection and prevention tool in ecological management. This method is used to predict possible influences of a certain material to the environment through different development stages of the material. In LCA, the product systems are evaluated on a functionally equivalent basis, which, in this case, was 1000 cubic centimeters of an alloy. Two of the LCA phases, life-cycle inventory (LCA) and life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), are needed to calculate the environmental impacts. Methodology of LCIA applied in this analysis aligns every input and output influence into 16 different categories, divided in two subcategories. The life-cycle assessment reaserch review of the leadfree solders Sn-Cu, SAC (Sn-Ag-Cu), BSA (Bi-Sb-Ag) and SABC (Sn-Ag-Bi-Cu) respectively, is given in this paper, from the environmental protection aspect starting from production, through application process and finally, reclamation at the end-of-life, i.e. recycling. There are several opportunities for reducing the overall environmental and human health impacts of solder used in electronics manufacturing based on the results of the LCA, such as: using secondary metals reclaimed through post-industrial recycling; power consumption reducing by replacing older, less efficient reflow assembly equipment, or by optimizing the current equipment to perform at the elevated temperatures required for lead-free soldering, etc. The LCA analysis was done comparatively in relation to widely used Sn-Pb solder material. Additionally, the impact factors of material consumption, energy use, water and air reserves, human health and ecotoxicity have been ALSO considered including the potentials for dissolution and recycling processes.

Although there was a demand for environmental health data on chemicals, there was no global scientific organization able to talk about the science behind the regulations being developed. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) was founded in 1979. SETAC has three strengths: its global scale, its tripartite membership and governance, and its scientific base. Because SETAC was developed on an international scale, it has been able to address global environmental issues.The SETAC North American LCA Advisory Group is a formally recognized group within SETAC that has been in existence since June 1991. Similarly, SETAC Europe established an LCA Steering Committee. Both the LCA Advisory and Steering Committee are referred to as the SETAC LCA Groups.The LCA Groups report to the Board of Directors of both SETAC and SETAC Europe. Specific activities such as workshops, conferences, or educational material development, including ‘position papers’, are approved by the Board of Directors. During the 1990s these SETAC LCA Groups were instrumental in driving the scientific progress to codify the professional practice of LCA. During this time period, several major workshops were successfully organized and over a dozen key publications produced. The SETAC LCA Groups also broadly supported the initial preparation of the ISO 14040 series of voluntary international standards as well as their subsequent revisions.The general mission of the SETAC LCA Groups is to proactively advance the science and application of LCAs to reduce the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with products, packaging, processes or activities.Although life cycle assessment promised to be a valuable tool in evaluating the environmental consequences of a product, process, or activity, the concept was relatively new and required a framework for further development.The workshop, ‘A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments’, held August 18–23, 1990, at Smugglers Notch, Vermont, was organized by SETAC to develop a framework and consensus on the current state of LCA and research needs for conducting life cycle assessments. Although life cycle assessments have been used, in one form or another, before the name was coined, this workshop report is the first document which presented the name of the method.The four SETAC LCA workshops in Smugglers Notch (1990), Leiden (1991), Sandestin (1992) and Wintergreen (1992) formed a tiered process to culminate in the Code of Practice workshop of Sesimbra, Portugal, March 31–April 3, 1993.Developing international consensus on harmonized methods has been a goal of the SETAC LCA workshops. The ‘Code of Practice’ completed the harmonization process. Shortly after the workshop, during the autumn of 1993, the ISO standardization process was initiated.In 1994, as a result of the SETAC LCA workshops, the LCA Advisory Group of SETAC and the LCA Steering Committee of SETAC Europe established individual work groups to address specific LCA issues.SETAC’s working groups and workshops have advanced both the application and reputation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by authoring LCA publications, supporting the development of LCA standardization, partnering with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and advancing the use of LCA in various sectors. As SETAC grows and expands on its own and with its supporters and partners, it will continue to advance the understanding and use of LCA while ensuring that science is kept at the forefront of LCA development.KeywordsGlobal coordinating group (GCG)International organization for standardization (ISO)LCA in developing countriesLCA in the building sectorLife cycle assessment (LCA)Pellston workshopsSETAC Europe LCA steering committeeSETAC LCA groupsSETAC North American LCA advisory groupUNEP/SETAC Life cycle initiativeWork groups life cycle impact assessmentWork groups simplified/Streamlined LCAWorkshop LeidenWorkshop SandestinWorkshop SesimbraWorkshop Smugglers NotchWorkshop Wintergreen

Despite the ever-growing body of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature on electricity generation technologies, inconsistent methods and assumptions hamper comparison across studies and pooling of published results. Synthesis of the body of previous research is necessary to generate robust results to assess and compare environmental performance of different energy technologies for the benefit of policy makers, managers, investors, and citizens. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory initiated the LCA Harmonization Project in an effort to rigorously leverage the numerous individual studies to develop collective insights. The goals of this project were to: (1) understand the range of published results of LCAs of electricity generation technologies, (2) reduce the variability in published results that stem from inconsistent methods and assumptions, and (3) clarify the central tendency of published estimates to make the collective results of LCAs available to decision makers in the near term. The LCA Harmonization Project's initial focus was evaluating life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity generation technologies. Six articles from this first phase of the project are presented in a special supplemental issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology on Meta-Analysis of LCA: coal (Whitaker et al. 2012), concentratingmore » solar power (Burkhardt et al. 2012), crystalline silicon photovoltaics (PVs) (Hsu et al. 2012), thin-film PVs (Kim et al. 2012), nuclear (Warner and Heath 2012), and wind (Dolan and Heath 2012). Harmonization is a meta-analytical approach that addresses inconsistency in methods and assumptions of previously published life cycle impact estimates. It has been applied in a rigorous manner to estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from many categories of electricity generation technologies in articles that appear in this special supplemental supplemental issue, reducing the variability and clarifying the central tendency of those estimates in ways useful for decision makers and analysts. Each article took a slightly different approach, demonstrating the flexibility of the harmonization approach. Each article also discusses limitations of the current research, and the state of knowledge and of harmonization, pointing toward a path of extending and improving the meta-analysis of LCAs.« less

As the sustainability improvement becomes an essential business task of industry, a number of companies are adopting IT-based environmental information systems (EIS). Life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool to improve environmental friendliness of a product, can also be systemized as a part of the EIS. This paper presents a case of an environmental information system which is integrated with online LCA tool to produce sets of hybrid life cycle inventory and examine its usefulness in the field application of the environmental management. Samsung SDI Ltd., the producer of display panels, has launched an EIS called Sustainability Management Initiative System (SMIS). The system comprised modules of functions such as environmental management system (EMS), green procurement (GP), customer relation (e-VOC), eco-design, and LCA. The LCA module adopted the hybrid LCA methodology in the sense that it combines process LCA for the site processes and input–output (IO) LCA for upstream processes to produce cradle-to-gate LCA results. LCA results from the module are compared with results of other LCA studies made by the application of different methodologies. The advantages and application of the LCA system are also discussed in light of the electronics industry. LCA can play a vital role in sustainability management by finding environmental burden of products in their life cycle. It is especially true in the case of the electronics industry, since the electronic products have some critical public concerns in the use and end-of-life phase. SMIS shows a method for hybrid LCA through online data communication with EMS and GP module. The integration of IT-based hybrid LCA in environmental information system was set to begin in January 2006. The advantage of the comparing and regular monitoring of the LCA value is that it improves the system completeness and increases the reliability of LCA. By comparing the hybrid LCA and process LCA in the cradle-to-gate stage, the gap between both methods of the 42-in. standard definition plasma display panel (PDP) ranges from 1% (acidification impact category) to −282% (abiotic resource depletion impact category), with an average gap of 68.63%. The gaps of the impact categories of acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), and global warming (GWP) are relatively low (less than 10%). In the result of the comparative analysis, the strength of correlation of three impact categories (AP, EP, GWP) shows that it is reliable to use the hybrid LCA when assessing the environmental impacts of the PDP module. Hybrid LCA has its own risk on data accuracy. However, the risk is affordable when it comes to the comparative LCA among different models of similar product line of a company. In the results of 2 years of monitoring of 42-in. Standard definition PDP, the hybrid LCA score has been decreased by 30%. The system also efficiently shortens man-days for LCA study per product. This fact can facilitate the eco-design of the products and can give quick response to the customer's inquiry on the product's eco-profile. Even though there is the necessity for improvement of process data currently available, the hybrid LCA provides insight into the assessments of the eco-efficiency of the manufacturing process and the environmental impacts of a product. As the environmental concerns of the industries increase, the need for environmental data management also increases. LCA shall be a core part of the environmental information system by which the environmental performances of products can be controlled. Hybrid type of LCA is effective in controlling the usual eco-profile of the products in a company. For an industry, in particular electronics, which imports a broad band of raw material and parts, hybrid LCA is more practicable than the classic LCA. Continuous efforts are needed to align input data and keep conformity, which reduces data uncertainty of the system.

Context The European Commission (EC) recognised Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as "the best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products". It also identified "the need to improve data availability and quality worldwide by internationally cooperating on LCA data and methods". The life cycle approach is also part of the 2011 Communication on "A resource-efficient Europe – Flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy". To support these life cycle based EU policies, the EC has started the "European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPCLA)"[1]services (e.g. consulting or research services), tools (e.g. LCA tools, ecodesign tools), databases (e.g. LCI databases) and the corresponding developers and providers. in 2005. This Platform is implemented and coordinated by the EC Directorate-General Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Environment and Sustainability, in close collaboration with DG Environment. The Platform works on the basis of coherent and quality-assured life cycle data, methods, and studies. The LCA Resource Directory is one of the deliverables of the Platform. This application has been running since 2006 and it contains lists of Novelty The LCA Resource Directory has recently been further developed so that it can contain and organize LCA case studies and metadata on these studies. The new LCA Resource Directory will be launched during the Fall 2011. Methods The new functionalities of the LCA Resource Directory allow users (LCA expert and non-expert) to browse a database of LCA studies. Thanks to the searching tool, a user can sort the information available as metadata and identify relevant LCA studies according to his/her interests. Many of the fields of the template used to characterize LCA studies are based on the ISO 1404x series. Some fields of the template are mandatory (e.g. functional unit and system boundary) in order to assure that the information showed in the application fulfills most of the requirements of the ISO 14044 for reports to be disclosed to the public. Other fields of the template include: "Intended application(s)", "LCIA impact categories" and "Compliance". The LCA study has to be uploaded on the Directory. Moreover, a final verification step is performed by the web application administrator to ensure quality and consistency. The application is open worldwide (http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/directory.vm). Any research group, company, university, etc. is now able, after registration, to upload studies and give metadata on them using a template. DG JRC will be in charge of the maintenance of the application and will populate the Directory with the first set of studies during the Fall 2011. An open call to relevant research groups and institutions will be send in order to populate the Directory with registered users and studies. Conclusions With these new capabilities of the Resource Directory, the EPLCA makes progress in its aim of promoting life cycle thinking when making available to all kind of LCA practitioners a good quality database of LCA studies, together with a searching tool. [1] http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Urban water systems around the world are going through a period of substantial change: they are evolving towards more complex water supply alternatives; are being placed under increasing pressure to achieve higher quality effluent and biosolids discharges; and are being confronted with a growing number of broader environmental management challenges. This thesis explored the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology for assisting in that process of change, because of LCA’s strengths in combining practicality and flexibility with ‘big picture’ thinking. The overarching goals were to: (1) explore LCA principles that do or do not provide useful perspectives for urban water planners, and (2) identify situations where the benefits from life-cycle thinking will be impeded by gaps in data and modelling approaches. The analytical starting point was a comparison of two different configurations for a city-scale, integrated water supply and wastewater system: a ‘traditional’ approach dependent on low-energy dam-sourced mains water supply; and one with a more complex mix of contemporary water supply infrastructure intended to reduce the intensity of freshwater extraction and nutrient discharge. This change incurs a substantial increase in energy use, meaning the reduced pressure on local aquatic ecosystems may come at the expense of large increases in other life-cycle impacts. Notably however, the results generated in this thesis indicate that an exclusive focus on energy use is unlikely to be a robust approach to factoring these bigger picture environmental impacts into water industry decision making. Furthermore, it is the wastewater components of the system, rather than the water supply components, that make the largest contribution to most of the life-cycle impacts. An excessive focus on the energy or greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of growing urban water demands is, therefore, unlikely to chart the industry on an optimal course to a more environmentally benign system configuration. The estimates for direct (scope 1) greenhouse gas emissions in this thesis utilise a comprehensive set of locally relevant empirical data and expert knowledge. Based on that, direct emissions could comprise 20% or more of the overall GHG footprint for urban water infrastructure systems. The substantial spatial variability associated with all the largest direct emission sources should be an important consideration in the urban water decision making process. For assessing the option to dispose of sewage treatment plant (STP) biosolids onto farmlands, the uncertainty associated with estimating field fluxes of carbon and nitrogen is likely to be more important than the more traditional focus on biosolids transport energy. The second major case study considered in this thesis is focussed on the issue of biosolids reuse for agricultural purposes. When that practice is assessed against a broader set of impact categories than just energy use or GHG emissions, it becomes apparent that conventional life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models could bias against this as a preferred fertiliser source. With respect to nutrient discharge, metals toxicity, and phosphorus recovery, there is a disconnect between the results produced with these impact assessment models, and the scientific knowledge and industry priorities that currently guide the associated Australian policy debate. Growing use of LCA in the Australian agricultural sector will encourage the use of those very models that are least well placed to provide useful critique of biosolids applications to soils, hence could lead to a weakening of agricultural support for this practice. This could pose a risk for water utilities already dependent on farmers to absorb the majority of their STP biosolids. Phosphorus recovery and organics toxicity are both issues that could benefit from analysis incorporating the life-cycle perspective, since for both there is the prospect that water industry mitigation actions could shift the environmental burden to somewhere else in its supply chains. However, the analyses presented here suggest that the available LCIA models are not up to this task in either case. For the assessment of minerals resource depletion, the choice of impact assessment models could also have a substantial effect on the results that are obtained. A number of priority tasks are identified here, that would advance the LCA modelling framework so it can provide more meaningful contribution to urban water cycle planning. Ozone depletion assessment is another issue where the adoption of conventional LCIA approaches will fail to provide any useful insight to the urban water industry. There is a strong case for including N2O emissions in such assessments, and doing so clearly indicates this could have a material influence on the conclusions draw from analysis of water infrastructure systems. Quantifying the ozone enhancing effects of CO2 and CH4 emissions remains a bridge too far for the available LCIA models, but their increasing and complex influence suggests there may be a need for evolution in the metrics used to assess the ozone depletion issue. The urban water industry would likely be affected by any changes in international ozone-layer policy as a result of the increased scientific focus on these non-halocarbons, and should keep a watching brief on this issue. The work undertaken in this thesis clearly identifies the value that can be derived from the LCA approach to infrastructure and options analysis. Furthermore, the compilation of whole-of-system data provides benchmarks that offer valuable benefits for the task of considering environmental trade-offs – whether that be from comparing across different water system technology options, and/or comparing across impacts that occur at different localities or points in time, and/or comparing across different environmental issues. In all respects, the goal should be to strive for robust consideration across all important life-cycle contributions and impacts. The challenge is to appropriately direct effort into the issues that matter, rather than those that are easiest to deal with. Incidental benefits derived from detailed industry data collection can be substantial, however they do not necessarily ensure that LCA delivers its fullest value. Detailed consideration may well be required on uncertain issues that are beyond the traditional expertise of the analyst. Practitioners should also resist the temptation to uncritically adopt historical convention in the choice of LCA impact assessment models. Lack of rigour in the definition of inventory data and/or impact assessment models doesn’t prevent LCA studies from being completed, but it will greatly diminish the value of the LCA exercise.