Who Cares About Life Cycle Assessment?

Abstract

In the past few decades, life cycle assessment (LCA) has evolved from a niche application into a mainstream methodology for guiding environmental decisions related to products, policies, business strategies, and environmental communications. As such, it is clear that LCA practice is no longer limited to a dedicated few engineers and scientists; rather, it is increasingly being utilized within a large number of professions and for a wide variety of sustainability objectives. Our cohort was drawn from students enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) titled ‘How Green is That Product? An Introduction to Life Cycle Environmental Assessment.’ Given the global nature of MOOCs, our survey included wider geographic representation than … previous …surveys Previous surveys have shed light on the applications, methods, and challenges of experienced LCA analysts. This journal has published two such surveys, both of which offered useful windows into the state of LCA practice. Cooper and Fava surveyed 65 LCA practitioners in 2006 and focused on their job functions, how and why they used LCA, and the difficulties faced when performing LCAs (Cooper and Fava 2006). In 2011, Teixeira and Pax adapted the Cooper and Fava survey to query an additional 117 LCA practitioners (Teixeira and Pax 2011), primarily from the agri-food industries. Both surveys provided useful insights on LCA applications and challenges related to LCA methods and data sources. This column presents survey results for a different, but equally important, cohort: prospective LCA practitioners. We define prospective LCA practitioners as those with little or no LCA experience who are in the early stages of their formal LCA training. Understanding the skills, professions, and intended applications of prospective LCA practitioners can provide insights into the characteristics and expectations of future LCA analysts. By considering the needs of both current and prospective LCA practitioners, the LCA community can make broader-reaching methodological and pedagogical improvements to enable wider adoption of LCA moving forward. Our cohort was drawn from students enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) titled “How green is that product? An introduction to life cycle environmental assessment.” This 9-week MOOC was offered in January 2014 through the Coursera platform (Masanet 2014). The MOOC introduced students to quantitative aspects of LCA, including constructing unit process models, compiling life cycle inventories (LCIs), conducting impact assessments, and interpreting results within the context of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 series of standards. Upon enrollment, students were asked to complete a precourse survey. Nearly 2,500 students responded to the survey, which provides a much larger sample size than previous surveys of LCA practitioners. Our informal survey was not designed for rigorous statistical analysis, but rather to identify broad characteristics among the student body. Given the global nature of MOOCs, our survey included wider geographic representation than the previous two surveys, in which 90% of respondents were from North America and Europe. Of our respondents, 34% were from Europe, 31% were from North America, 21% were from Asia (predominantly from India and China), 10% were from Central and South America, 2% were from Africa, and 2% were from Australasia. These results may reflect a growing interest in LCA beyond its historical strongholds of North America and Europe and should lend this survey a more globally representative perspective than previous surveys. Figure 1 summarizes earlier LCA exposure and motivations for taking the MOOC. The survey question is listed above each chart within the figure. The top chart in figure 1 indicates that many respondents had some previous exposure to LCA, which likely reflects the increasingly mainstream nature of LCA. The most frequent exposure came through LCA results reported in the media, which is becoming more common as LCA gains relevance in environmental discourse related to product claims, corporate reports, and public policies. Nearly half of the students learned about LCA concepts in a class or read an LCA study, which may indicate increasing penetration of LCA into more-general environmental curricula. Fewer than 5% of the respondents indicated that they often conduct LCAs, often use LCA for their job, or often use LCA results to make a decision. In other words, the vast majority of respondents can reasonably be considered prospective (as opposed to experienced) LCA practitioners. The bottom chart in figure 1 summarizes motivations for taking the MOOC. Most common was general curiosity, which reflects the casual nature of many online learners. However, the next most-frequent responses suggest that many enrolled students intended to become proficient in LCA and apply LCA to their personal and professional decisions. In the remainder of this column, we further analyze the responses of 897 students who intended to both become proficient in LCA and apply LCA in their professional decisions (i.e., in their jobs). We argue that these 897 students are the most likely future LCA analysts among the respondents and hereafter refer to them as prospective LCA practitioners. Our prospective LCA practitioners were both highly educated and predominantly early- to mid-career professionals. Eighty-seven percent had completed a bachelor's degree, 46% had completed a master's degree, and 8% had completed a doctorate-level degree. Eighty-two percent were under the age of 50, with the largest share of students (42%) falling into the 23 to 29 age range. There are not enough data available yet for MOOCs in general to determine whether these characteristics are typical of all online learners or whether they were unique to our prospective LCA practitioners. Regardless, these results suggest strong interest among highly educated students early in their professional carriers. Therefore, there may be an opportunity for the LCA community to expand its resources, educational programs, and job opportunities to meet latent demand from high-caliber students who might not have access to LCA training or applications in their current positions or locations. The top chart of figure 2 indicates that the majority of respondents received primary training in engineering, environmental sciences, and basic sciences. Such training is fairly typical of today's LCA practitioners, given the quantitative nature of LCA and its long-standing focus on scientific methods development and applications to engineered systems. One quarter of respondents received primary training in business and economics, which might be the result of growing interest in incorporating LCA into business strategy decisions, corporate marketing programs, and environmental product declarations. Fewer prospective LCA practitioners indicated primary training in the social sciences, humanities, public policy, and other traditionally nontechnical fields. However, their presence here might indicate an opportunity for greater inclusion of social and behavioral perspectives in LCA practice, which would benefit LCA in general, and the rising social LCA and public-policy LCA movements in particular. It follows that there may also be a latent need for providing remedial, but accessible, training on core quantitative skills within LCA courses for those who may apply LCA in their jobs, but do not possess a strong technical background. Our prospective LCA practitioners’ sectors of employment (figure 2, bottom chart) represent a departure from the earlier LCA practitioners surveyed by Cooper and Fava, who worked predominantly in the materials, manufacturing, and construction sectors (47%) and academia (20%), followed by consulting (11%), government (11%), and nongovernmental organizations (6%). In contrast, only 23% of our prospective LCA practitioners work in the industrial and construction sectors and only 11% work in academia. Nearly half of our prospective LCA practitioners work in the commercial services, nonprofit, and energy sectors, with commercial services being the single-most common sector of employment (18%). These differences may indicate an expansion of LCA practice beyond well-established industrial product and process applications into increasingly common uses in the commercial services (e.g., LCA consulting, corporate strategy, and green marketing), nonprofit (e.g., environmental advocacy and corporate environmental rankings), and energy (e.g., renewable fuels policy and low-carbon fuels development) sectors. Such an expansion highlights opportunities for the LCA community to continue adapting to business, policy, and social applications beyond industrial and academic research decisions—opportunities that are also suggested by the nontechnical backgrounds of many respondents in figure 2 (top chart). Figure 3 summarizes intended LCA applications and the most pressing problems chosen by our prospective LCA practitioners. Similar to the previous surveys of LCA practitioners, “research and development” and “business strategy” were among the most frequently chosen applications (top chart). In contrast to previous surveys, however, our respondents chose “procurement” and “corporate environmental reporting” applications with greater frequencies. These differences might reflect the growing desire among many firms to reduce their upstream environmental footprints and offer greater public disclosure of their environmental impacts on society—initiatives that heavily rely on LCA methods and results. Moreover, these differences might also be explained by the large number of respondents with primary training in business and economics, which might weight the responses more toward business-oriented decisions. The sustainability priorities expressed in figure 3 (bottom chart) suggest that our prospective LCA practitioners are predominantly concerned with life cycle impact categories that current LCA tools are fairly well equipped to tackle (i.e., energy, water quality, and climate change). One possible exception is protection of ecosystem health, which is rarely modeled beyond a mid-point impact category. However, many respondents also expressed interest in impacts that are much harder to address using current LCA tools and methods, including biodiversity protection, environmental justice, poverty alleviation, and land preservation. Online discussions during the MOOC revealed that interests in these more difficult impacts were often influenced by the unique local environmental challenges being faced by students in the developing world. This interest in more difficult impacts among prospective LCA practitioners, especially in the developing world, may be yet another reason to redouble efforts within the LCA community to develop methods and data sets for addressing such impacts in LCA. Understanding the characteristics of prospective LCA practitioners sheds light on where LCA practice might be headed, as well as how LCA methods and education may need to adapt to changing applications. Our survey results are limited to students taking a free online course, which may not be representative of all prospective LCA practitioners. However, our results suggest there is broad global interest in LCA practice among well-educated students from a number of disciplines. Further, these students are interested in applying LCA methods to a broader range of applications and sustainability problems, and across a broader range of sectors, than indicated by previous surveys of LCA practitioners, which may translate into expanded educational and application opportunities for the LCA community. More regular and coordinated surveys of both current and prospective LCA practitioners are recommended moving forward to better identify and act upon opportunities for improving LCA practice and adoption. Eric Masanet is the Morris E. Fine Junior Professor in Materials and Manufacturing at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA. Yuan Chang is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA.