1. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Connections with Sustainability
Scott Matthews
Green Design Institute

2. Agenda
Pre-Assessment
Sustainability’s Place in LCA
Intro to LCA

3. Pre-Assessment
We are doing an assessment of environmental-systems courses at CMU
Used to assess literacy before and after
Pre-test on your blackboard home page
Due Feb 5 (not graded!)

4. Links to Sustainability
This course is 3rd of 4th courses in CEE “Sustainability” sequence
Intro to Sustainable Engineering (Fall)
Industrial Ecology (Fall)
LCA (Spring)
Case Studies in Sust. Engineering (Spring)
Most of you have taken first 1-2 courses
Should decide whether to take this, or a similar course (e.g., )

5. Why LCA?
In “meeting needs of present without compromising our ability to meet future needs”, we are faced with some obstacles
Corporate and social pressures
Governmental/regulatory barriers
Uncertain objectives/goals
Lack of tools to measure our progress
Sometimes our intuition is not a sufficient framework for analysis

6. Point of Departure: Life Cycle Cost Modeling
Developed to track costs over life cycle of infrastructure, etc.
Ensure that decision makers thought about “first cost” and maintenance, etc.
Useful also for personal decisions (e.g., what kind of car to buy)
If you have taken an investment analysis course, this is familiar
In depth stuff on this topic better left for a course on Infrastructure Management

7. Objectives
Identify costs that happen during the life of the “project” that are not first cost
Determine a “total cost”
Compare these to first cost
Ideally, “discount” all future costs to the present for comparison
Ideally, compare to total benefits to determine whether it is worthwhile

8. Example - Light Bulbs Should I choose incandescent or flourescent?
Bulb costs $1 versus $3
How long are they on? Hours -> kWh -> $
How long do they last? vs 8000 hrs
How much do they “cost to buy & change”
E.g., campus laborers cost $40/hr
Flourescent bulbs can save lots over life.

9. Example - A Car What are life cycle costs?
Edmunds.com - true cost to own calculator
Compare 2 cars we are considering.
Which is cheaper? Why? Does that change our decision?
Is it affected by the type of vehicle (eg sedan)?

10. Notes on Examples
These examples were cost-based, without consideration of environmental issues.
Its problems like these that motivated environmental life cycle analysis
That is the focus of the rest of the course

11. Definitions
A life cycle of a product (a.k.a. “cradle to grave”) begins with raw materials production and extends to manufacture, use, transport, and disposition
LCA is “a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or system by”:
Setting goals and scope of study
Compiling an inventory of inputs / outputs
Evaluating potential impacts of those
Interpreting result of the inventory and impact assessment in context of study objectives
Suggesting improvements for future benefit

12. What is LCA? LCA is not a cure-all for our environmental problems
LCA is a way of structuring/organizing the relevant parts of the life cycle
It is a tool to track performance

13. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)
A concept and methodology to evaluate the environmental effects of a product or activity holistically, by analyzing the whole life cycle of a particular product, process, or activity (U.S. EPA, 1993).
LCA studies analyze the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle (e.g., cradle-to-grave) from raw material acquisition through production, use and disposal (ISO).
Mining
Disposal
Use/
Operation
Manuf.
Reuse
Recycling
Waste

14. History of LCA Note: Life Cycle Cost Analysis is a subset
Cost focused: big factor in infrastructure management
Initial LCA work was focused on energy
first multi-criteria study for Coca-Cola
Choice between glass and plastic for container
Choice between internal / external container production
End of life options (recycling or one-way)
Result: plastic bottle was best, contrary to expectations.
Study was never published
Questions of validity then occurred
Led to calls by scientific community for a standardisation process

15. History (cont.)
Early 1990s: US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), etc
: International Organization for Standardization (ISO) documents
A piece of global “EMS standard”
First international LCA ‘standard’
Look over these documents on web site!

16. Stages of the Product Life Cycle
Source: U.S. EPA

18. Quick Example
In early 1990s, California had a policy goal of reducing emissions of air pollution by encouraging the adoption of ‘zero emission vehicles (ZEVs)’ into 2% of the fleet by year 1998 (10% in 2003).
These vehicles were fully battery-powered
These vehicles had no tailpipes
A study in Science by Lave et al (1995) suggested this policy would not achieve its intended goals
What were the problems?

19. Example - Answers Cars fully powered by batteries
Batteries of this type need to be recharged
Recharging happens with electricity
Electricity production has air emissions!
Also - at the time, batteries were lead-acid
Large batteries for battery-only power
Large amounts of lead needed (with significant manufacture/recycling emissions of lead)
More lead released than without ZEVs!
A Life Cycle Assessment framework if adopted may have pointed out these issues.

20. Anecdote
Studies on “green” buildings suggest that a 2% increase in initial cost can save 10x
This is only the dollar-based benefit

21. Current State of the Art
Most “LCAs” end at the inventory stage
These studies yield ‘results’ that are a laundry list of emissions, energy, etc.
The impact assessment stage is still being developed, validated, and tested globally
Given that, how do we currently translate these inventories into a practical answer?

22. Re-linking cost and environment
This is a course on sustainability
Different definitions, but in general it refers to economic, social, and environmental issues being jointly considered
Cost (economic) is only one part. We need to understand the others also.
LCA is the kind of tool to help do this.
Goal: life cycle THINKING.

23. For Next Class Read US EPA Intro to LCA
Read the 2 ISO Framework documents (PDFs) posted on website
Note #1 is very similar to reading from EPA - probably can skim.
#2 is fairly different
In class we will do a visual learning exercise to motivate why life cycle assessment matters

24. Pre-Assessment Reminder
Don’t forget to do the blackboard Assessment
Under course “S07 Environmental Assessment”