by aleida, on November 22nd, 2009
The fourth session I attended was Exploring Life-Cycle Methodology as a Tool for Communicating the Environmental Performance of a Product. There was so much information to focus on that I didn’t even write down the presenters’ names. However, the Education Program lists the moderator as Jeremy Benkin, from CB Richard Ellis and the presenters as Adam Cone, Jack Geibig from the University of Tennessee, and Amanda Pike from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
First, it began with a quick introduction to the two reigning impact calculators available: the Athena Institute’s EcoCalculator, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) 4.0 software. The tools are naturally not the same. For example, while BEES looks at the impact of materials over a span of 50 years, the EcoCalculator takes a 60-year view. And while BEES considers twelve elements, the EcoCalculator factors in only five. When asked to calculate the global warming potential impact (in CO2 equivalent) of one cubic yard of concrete, the systems give results that differ by a factor of three, a considerable variation.
So if sustainability is defined differently by different organizations, how can the differing results be interpreted? Do products have to be evaluated under every LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) system available? One recommendation is that we, the people looking at the life-cycle impact of materials, realize that while LCA tools are valuable, they are imperfect. They are really just mathematical models with limitations. We need to understand those limitations and be able to discern the context within which LCA results are actually valid and meaningful. We need to use LCAs not as decision-making tools, but rather as supporting material.
If you have a product for which you’d like to conduct an LCA study, here is, in very, very rough form, just some of the steps that you’d need to take:
- first, engage an LCA practitioner who can figure out all the mathematical modeling
- you need to basically open the doors to your entire company to the practitioner; they need to know as much information about every step traveled by that product; they need to know that trajectory intimately, from raw material extraction all the way to final disposal
- understand what information will be included in the final assessment, since there are no rules as to what the practitioner can include or exclude
- define the goal and scope of the assessment: why are you doing the study? who is your audience? what boundaries should be established? what impacts will the study consider? how will you interpret the results?
- the practitioner will ask for information; typically, the more precise answers you provide, the more precise the assessment will be; if you give estimates, the LCA will be an estimate as well
- help the practitioner understand the production cycle: are there temporal seasons, or ebbs and flows of production to incorporate? consider looking at a full year in order to capture the whole production cycle
- keep returning to the assessment to refine it by closing any prior data gaps
Comparing the LCA of one product to the LCA of another product, even if they are both similar, requires considerably more work. If the LCAs were undertaken independently, there is absolutely no guarantee that their results are “apples to apples” comparable. Basically, there really is no perfect model yet; there is no consensus on what to study, how to interpret the data, and how to compare products. I must admit this was a little disheartening to hear. But it is therefore not surprising that the future of LCAs focuses on standards: figuring out how to document data, how to select boundaries, how to deal with assumptions, and, ultimately, how to assess it all.
Did you also attend this session? If so, what did you think?
The presenter who compared the tools was Adam Cone. I liked his presentation a lot. You can read my 2 cents at http://wp.me/p5Nyu-mU . Nice job covering the event btw
Hi Ian,
Thank you so much for your kind words, and for engaging in this topic. I really liked Cone’s presentation, too – he clearly illustrated some of the pitfalls of modeling, and that we have a long way to go before modeling of any kind becomes in any way standard. I read your article and completely agree with you that because there is apparently so much room for improvement, there is a lot of room for growth.
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