By evaluating full environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of decarbonised technologies and systems, life cycle assessment (LCA) enables industry, policymakers and technology developers to make informed, sustainable decisions that avoid unintended consequences, writes Marcelle McManus FEI, Director of the Sustainable Energy Systems Research Centre at the University of Bath. Below is an edited and abridged synthesis of UK research on the topic commissioned by the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) over the last few years.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method for evaluating the environmental impacts of a product, process or service throughout its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal (see headline image). It is a powerful tool that supports the design of long-term strategies to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHGs), making its use crucial for decarbonisation. The use of LCA enables industry, policymakers and technology developers in their decision-making in a variety of areas, such as screening for alternative technologies, pinpointing the specific stages of a process where the most significant environmental impacts are occurring (hotspot identification), and contributing data to enable the production of more sustainable solutions.

Despite LCA being identified as a critical tool to enable effective decarbonisation, there is still a lack of consistent data available for both novel and existing materials, leading to an inability to reliably compare results. Encouragingly, however, efforts to address uncertainty and sensitivity, and improve data collection and sharing, are rapidly improving the ability to access and process data. Alongside data availability, there are issues with methodological consistency, with different industrial sectors using differing conventions for system boundaries and carbon measurement.