Page 49 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Chapter 4
LCA Applications

Mikołaj Owsianiak, Anders Bjørn, Alexis Laurent, Christine Molin
and Morten W. Ryberg

Abstract The chapter gives examples of applications of LCA by the central
societal actors in government, industry and citizens, and discusses major motiva-
tions and challenges for the use of LCA to support science-based decision-making
from their respective perspectives. We highlight applications of LCA in policy
formulation, implementation and evaluation, present different purposes of LCA
application in industry at both product and corporate levels, and discuss challenges
for LCA applications in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Our synthesis
demonstrates the importance of LCA as a tool to quantify environmental impacts of
products and systems and support decisions around production and consumption
and highlights factors that prevent its even more widespread application.

Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter the reader should be able to:
• Explain the main motivations for use of LCA by governments, industry, and
citizens and their main types of LCA applications.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the dif-
ferent types of LCA applications.

M. Owsianiak (&) A. Bjørn A. Laurent C. Molin M.W. Ryberg
Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment,
Department of Management Engineering, Technical University
of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
e-mail: miow@dtu.dk
A. Bjørn
CIRAIG, Polytechnique Montréal, 3333 Chemin Queen-Mary,
Montréal, QC, Canada
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 31
M.Z. Hauschild et al. (eds.), Life Cycle Assessment,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56475-3_4