This course will teach students how to evaluate the environmental impact of a system by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). An LCA is a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts directly or indirectly caused by a system (e.g., product, service, technology) over its entire life cycle. Calculating the environmental impact is necessary for promoting improvement effort. LCA helps to avoid burden shifting, as it covers a wide range of impacts (i.e. climate change, particulate matter formation, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, resource depletion etc.) and the whole life cycle, from cradle to grave. This course consists of a theoretical part, in which the principles of LCA will be explained, and a practical part, in which the students will do their own LCA. Each student will perform a life cycle assessment on a topic of their choice, if possible related to their PhD topic. During the lectures, they will receive instructions on how to perform each phase of the LCA, according to the ISO 14040/44 framework. After each phase, their findings will be reviewed by the instructor. At the end of the course, the students will present the outcome of their analysis to their fellow students. The topics covered by the course are: 1. Introduction: o What is LCA?, o Why is LCA important?, o LCA procedure, 4 phases of an LCA, o Standards and guidelines, o Benefits and limitations of LCA compared to other sustainability assessment tools, o Environmental impacts of different types of materials, o Homework: the students will choose the topic of their LCA. 2. Phase 1: Goal and scope definition o Items to be included in the goal and scope of the study, o What to consider when defining these?, o Importance of methodological choices, e.g., allocation procedures, system boundaries for reuse and recycling, attributional and consequential modelling, o Homework: the students will prepare the goal and scope of their chosen topic. 3. Phase 2: Inventory analysis o Data to collect and data sources, o Practical instructions on how to collect and validate data, o Homework: the students will prepare the data inventory of their chosen topic. 4. Phase 3: Impact assessment o Cause-effect chain, midpoint and endpoint indicators, o Calculating the potential environmental impacts of the system (classification, characterisation, normalisation and weighting), o Homework: the students will perform the impact assessment of their chosen topic. 5. Phase 4: Interpretation o What to take into account when interpreting the results?, o Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses, o Homework: the students will interpret the results of their chosen topic. 6. Presentation and discussion of the students' LCAs. Literature: 1. ISO 14040: 2006 - Environmental management - Life cycle assessment - Principles and framework. 2. ISO 14044: 2006 - Environmental management - Life cycle assessment - Requirements and guidelines. 3. M. F. Ashby, Materials and the Environment: Eco-informed Material Choice, 3rd Ed. Butterworth-Heinemann, (2021). Online resources Articles that explain LCA terminology, methodology, new developments etc.: https://pre-sustainability.com/articles Environmental Footprint methods proposed by the European Commission: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/smgp/index.htm
|