Dissemination of LCA methodology through LCA software and database

1 General requirements for LCA software tools

In recent years Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software tools have become increasingly important. Today a large number of LCA programs are available. The large diversity of LCA software tools on offer makes it necessary to first pinpoint some general requirements that determine the quality of an LCA software tool and secondly to describe these requirements qualitatively. The authors last year asse...

Main Characteristics of LCA

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has a number of defining characteristics that enables it to address questions that no other assessment tools can address. This chapter begins by demonstrating how the use of LCA in the late 2000s led to a drastic shift in the dominant perception that biofuels were “green”, “sustainable” or “carbon neutral”, which led to a change in biofuel policies. This is followed ...

Generalized Labeled LCA Queries

Making LCA More Efficient

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has gained attention because it enables quantitative evaluation of the burden a product places on the environment. However, acceptance of LCA has proceeded slowly because a large amount of work is required to gather the environmental burden data used in the evaluation. To shorten this work time, we utilize readily-accessible databases both internal and external to th...

Emerging role of Geographical Information System (GIS), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and spatial LCA (GIS-LCA) in sustainable bioenergy planning.

Sustainability of a bioenergy project depends on precise assessment of biomass resource, planning of cost-effective logistics and evaluation of possible environmental implications. In this context, this paper reviews the role and applications of geo-spatial tool such as Geographical Information System (GIS) for precise agro-residue resource assessment, biomass logistic and power plant design. F...