Page 70 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

5 LCA and Sustainability 53

comfort to the car, or if costumers travel longer distances due to an improved fuel
economy, reducing or eliminating the effect of the increase in eco-efficiency.
Another example is seen in the lighting technologies: Since the light bulb was
invented there has been an enormous increase in the energy efficiency, which has
equally lead to a dramatic decrease in the price of light. But as our appetite for more
light seems insatiable this increase in eco-efficiency has been met by a corre-
sponding increase in demand—with no signs of saturation. In fact, it has been found
that the fraction of GDP spent on light has remained almost constant, close to 1%
over the last three centuries in the UK and that this fraction is similar in other
countries spanning diverse temporal, geographic, technological and economic cir-
cumstances (Tsao and Waide 2010).
In sum, this implies that while LCA may help identify the most eco-efficient
solution among a range of alternatives, the actual eco-efficiency that we may
achieve through redesign and technological inventions is in many cases insufficient.
Furthermore, the increases that are gained in eco-efficiency on the product or
technology level may be counterbalanced by increases in demand. Impacts on the
environment quantified using LCA can be put into a sustainability perspective by
relating them to environmental carrying capacities (Bjørn et al. 2015). This can
facilitate an absolute evaluation of whether a studied product can be considered
environmentally sustainable, and if not, how much further environmental impacts
must be reduced for this to come true. Such an absolute perspective can comple-
ment the common relative perspective of LCA which is about identifying the
product system that is better for the environment, but that might not be good
enough from a sustainability perspective.
Yet, even when an absolute perspective is taken LCA cannot, by itself, cover all
relevant aspects of sustainability. Many sustainability researchers have argued that
the narrow focus on eco-efficiency simply will not suffice. They propose that we
have to look at the necessity of the services, and not only at providing the services
in the most eco-efficient way. In other words, these researchers talk about the
necessity to adjust the “A”, the affluence, in the IPAT equation. In this relation, the
LCA falls short—it is a tool to find the most eco-efficient way to deliver this service
among a list of predefined alternatives—not a tool for identifying the importance of
various services.
Increases in eco-efficiency are high on the agenda in many companies, not least
because of the often accompanying cost reductions, and on this journey there is no
doubt that the LCA will be an invaluable tool to show the way. However, at the
same time, we have to be open to the possibility that we may need to discuss not
only how different services should be provided, but also the more sensitive and
political question—whether a service should be provided at all, if we are to ensure
that the future generations are given the same possibilities for meeting their needs as
we were given.