Page 152 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

SOURCING LIFE CYCLE INVENTORY DATA 135

price information for most commodities is available through an on-line search.
The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis provides IO
tables for the United States (http://www.bea.gov/industry/).
Merging EIO with LCA referred to as EIOLCA, offers an alternative way
to easily create LCI. To do so, the economic output for each sector is first cal-
culated, and then the environmental outputs are calculated by multiplying
the economic output at each stage by the environmental impact per dollar
of output. The advantage of the economic input/output approach is that
it quickly covers an entire economy, including all the material and energy
inputs, thereby simplifying the inventory creation process. Its main disadvan-
tage is the data are created at high aggregate levels for an entire industry, such
as steel mills, rather than particular products, such as the type of steel used
to make automobiles. Therefore, if the product being studies is representative
of a sector, EIOLCA can provide a fast estimate of the complete supply chain
implications.
EIO-LCA methodology is a major research focus for the Green Design
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Over the past 15 years, the group has
investigated numerous products, services, and infrastructure systems using
LCA as a fundamental component of analysis, leading field in EIO methodol-
ogy and application, and produced an openly available on-line tool (http://
www.eiolca.net/methods.html).
"Hybrid" models which combine the economic input/output model with
process models have been proposed to utilize the advantages offered by both
approaches (Sangwon and Huppes 2002; Hendrickson, Lave L. et ah 2006). See
for example CEDA3.0 (http://www.iel.umn.edu/CEDA3_Users_Guide.pdf)

5.9 Global Guidance for Database Creation and
Management

A coordinated global effort to define and produce high-quality LCA data is
required if LCA practice is to advance in the most resource-efficient manner.
Further, a similar effort on data interchange is required to allow for the maxi-
mum exchange of information among LCA practitioners. Only with wide-
spread availability of LCA information will society be able to make efficient
and effective decisions on policies and design options that will allow future
generations to meet their own needs and aspirations.
Guidance principles provide direction to users on selecting data that meet
their needs, regardless of where an activity in a life cycle inventory (LCI)
occurs. In addition, data developers and database managers need guidance
on how to create datasets and operate databases, respectively, to provide
exchangeable and fully documented datasets to users. Globally harmonized
guidance will support an efficient allocation of resources, to ensure reliability
and quality of data.
Under the auspices of the Life Cycle Initiative, a joint effort between
the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Society of