Page 21 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

2 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

development and the cost of end-of-life operations. Life Cycle Analysis (not
yet referred to as 'Assessment') became the tool for improved budget man-
agement, linking functionality to total cost of ownership. This was a first for
government. Method issues and standardization questions soon followed.
How should data on past performance be related to expected future perfor-
mance? How is functionality defined? Can smaller systems like jet engines
be taken out of overall airplane functioning? Should system boundaries
encompass activities such as transport? How should accidents and mistakes
be considered? How should overhead costs and multi-function processes
be allocated? For public budget analysis, the life cycle approach led to gen-
eral questions on methodology and standardization, as in Marks & Massey
(1971), also linking to other "life cycle-like' tools for analysis, especially
cost-benefit analysis.
The life cycle concept rapidly spread to the private sector where firms
struggled with similar questions. By 1985, a survey paper (Gupta & Chow,
1985) showed over six hundred explicit life cycle studies that had been pub-
lished, all focusing on relating system cost to functionality. The methodol-
ogy issues were treated in an operational manner, for example by Dhillon
(1989). Optimizing system development and system performance became a
core goal for the now broadly applied public and private life cycle analysis
of cost.
There is now over a half a century of experience with function-based life
cycle analysis of system costs, see the survey in Huppes et ah (2004), continu-
ing in parallel with environmental Life Cycle Assessment, or environmental
LCA (moving now from 'Analysis' to 'Assessment'), and later to the life cycle
concept related to Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Returning to these roots might be
an interesting endeavor.

1.2 Environmental Life Cycle Concepts

This life cycle concept was already fully developed when environmental
policy became a major issue in all industrialized societies, at the end of the
Sixties and in the early Seventies. Environmental policies, mainly command-
and-control type, were at first source-oriented with very substantial reduc-
tions in emissions being realized. It soon became clear that such end-of-pipe
measures were increasingly expensive. However, other options were not eas-
ily introduced into the mainly command-and-control type regulatory frame-
work as it had been developed. Shifts in mode of transport, for example, were
clearly of broad environmental importance, but not easily brought into the
regulations. The comparative analysis of such different techniques for a simi-
lar function was hardly developed in a practical way. Cost-Benefit Analysis
(CBA), as an example, was focused at projects that aim to maximize welfare.
It was made obligatory for environmental regulatory programs in the US,
starting in 1971 with Executive Order 20503, on Quality of Life. Adapted
substantially by consecutive US presidents, it still is a main contender for