Digesting the alphabet soup of LCA
Open accessAbstract
One of the most pertinent and enduring debates within the life-cycle assessment (LCA) community is on consequential (CLCA) and attributional LCA (ALCA), see for example, Weidema et al. ( 1999 ), Guinée et al.( 2002 ), Ekvall and Andræ ( 2006 ), Schmidt ( 2010 ), Zamagni et al. ( 2012 ), Rehl et al. ( 2012 ), Anex and Lifset ( 2014 ), Brandão et al. ( 2014 ), Suh and Yang ( 2014 ), Dale and Kim ( 2014 ), Hertwich ( 2014 ), Plevin et al. ( 2014a ), Plevin et al. ( 2014b ), Ekvall et al. ( 2016 ), and Weidema et al. ( 2018 ). Amongst other things, the debate focuses on similarities and differences between these two modes and on which mode is more appropriate for which case or question. Some authors claimed superiority of one of these modes over the other (Plevin et al. 2014a ; Weidema et al. 2018 ). Here, we refrain from further dwelling on this discussion, but rather discuss the more recent emergence of other modes of LCA. These new modes have been developed by independent scholars, outside the ISO standards (International Organization for Standardisation 2006 ) and outside national and continental guidelines (e.g., European Commission—Joint Research Centre—Institute for Environment and Sustainability 2010 ). They all focus on estimating life-cycle impacts of future systems and we argue that they are all varieties of analysis fitting under the umbrella of “explorative” LCA. To substantiate this, we first look into the definitions of ALCA, CLCA, and some of the newer modes of LCA. We then briefly discuss similarities and differences between these different LCA modes, and conclude that rather than discussing different modes, the LCA community should focus on discussing their underlying real differences.
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The ex-ante framework lacks foresight in assessing the potential and adequacy of the process/product being developed in a future scenario.
“However, one of the main weaknesses of using this framework is the lack of foresight in assessing the potential and adequacy of the process/product being developed in a future scenario [11,122,123].”
From Assessing the future prospects of emerging technologies for shipping and aviation biofuels: A critical review (2024) · cites this paper as [122]
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Flagged first, then by citations
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- Authors
- Guinée, J. B., Cucurachi, S., Henriksson, P. J. G., & Heijungs, R.
- Affiliations
- Leiden University (NL)
- Stockholm Resilience Centre (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Guinée, Jeroen B.
- Venue
- The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment
- Published
- 2018-05-23
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 1507-1511
- ISSN
- 0948-3349 (ISSN-L)
- 1614-7502
- PMC
- PMC6435207
- OpenAlex
- W2804394303
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 3.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Leiden Repository (Leiden University) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- VU Research Portal (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Leiden University
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Chemistry › Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
- Keywords
- consequential life cycle assessment, attributional life cycle assessment, future systems
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