Life-cycle assessment

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates environmental impacts associated with a product or system across its life cycle, from resource extraction through production, use, and end of life.

Goal and scope definition: The LCA phase that states a study’s purpose, audience, system boundaries, and methodological choices. It determines which life-cycle stages and impacts the assessment includes.
Comparative life-cycle assessment: An LCA that compares the environmental impacts of alternative products or systems providing a defined function. It uses equivalent functional units and boundaries to compare options.
Carbon accounting: The measurement and reporting of greenhouse-gas emissions associated with an organization, activity, or product. It focuses on climate emissions rather than LCA’s wider environmental impact categories.
SETAC: The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, an international scientific organization that helped develop LCA methodology. SETAC workshops helped establish a shared framework for life-cycle studies.
Allocation (life-cycle assessment): The assignment of environmental inputs and outputs among products or functions in a shared process. Allocation rules can shift burdens between co-products and alter results.
Life-cycle inventory: The compilation of material and energy inputs and environmental releases associated with a product system. Its flow data provide the quantitative basis for impact calculations.
Environmental product declaration: A standardized disclosure of quantified environmental information about a product, commonly based on LCA. Product declarations communicate LCA results under defined reporting rules.
Environmental impact assessment: A process for predicting and evaluating the environmental effects of a proposed project before approval. It typically assesses a site-specific project, not a product’s full life cycle.
ISO 14040: An international standard outlining principles and framework requirements for life-cycle assessment. It codifies LCA’s framework and core methodological principles.
Consequential life-cycle assessment: An LCA approach that models environmental consequences of changes in demand or decisions. It answers decision-focused questions differently from attributional accounting of existing systems.

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