Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment

Published Date
October 2009, Vol.91(1):1–21, doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.06.018

Review

• Göran Finnveden ^a,,
 
• Michael Z. Hauschild ^b,
 
• Tomas Ekvall ^c,
 
• Jeroen Guinée ^d,
 
• Reinout Heijungs ^d,
 
• Stefanie Hellweg ^e,
 
• Annette Koehler ^e,
 
• David Pennington ^f,
 
• Sangwon Suh ^g,

• aDivision of Environmental Strategies Research – fms, Department of Urban Planning and Environment, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
• bDepartment of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet 424, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
• cIVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, PO Box 5302, SE-400 14 Göteborg, Sweden
• dInstitute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, PO Box 9518, 2300 RA, The Netherlands
• eETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
• fEuropean Commission, Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute of Environment and Sustainability (IES), Ispra, Italy
• gDepartment of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resource Sciences, 1390 Eckles Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA

Received 11 October 2008. Revised 22 May 2009. Accepted 19 June 2009. Available online 29 August 2009. 

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess the environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle, i.e., from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases, to waste management. The methodological development in LCA has been strong, and LCA is broadly applied in practice. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments of LCA methods. The focus is on some areas where there has been an intense methodological development during the last years. We also highlight some of the emerging issues. In relation to the Goal and Scope definition we especially discuss the distinction between attributional and consequential LCA. For the Inventory Analysis, this distinction is relevant when discussing system boundaries, data collection, and allocation. Also highlighted are developments concerning databases and Input–Output and hybrid LCA. In the sections on Life Cycle Impact Assessment we discuss the characteristics of the modelling as well as some recent developments for specific impact categories and weighting. In relation to the Interpretation the focus is on uncertainty analysis. Finally, we discuss recent developments in relation to some of the strengths and weaknesses of LCA.

Keywords

Life Cycle Assessment

LCA

Strategic Environmental Assessment

Risk assessment

LCC

Ecological footprint

Exergy analysis

Valuation

Weighting

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