Bringing a life cycle perspective to emerging technology development

Abstract

Bringing a life cycle perspective to emerging technology development"While the fundamental approach to conducting an LCA of emerging technologies is akin to that of LCA of existing technologies, emerging technologies pose additional challenges. Despite the growing interest in applying LCA at early stages of technology development, there is a lack of systematic guidance for LCA practitioners to evaluate emerging technologies." Current analysis of new technology typically applies economic, environmental, social, and technical performance assessments separately, conducted by individual specialists with little connection between the analyses. For example, engineers often fail to capture the full life cycle (LC) environmental impacts of a technology they are designing, both over its lifetime and with respect to upstream/downstream activities within the supply chain in which the technology will eventually be deployed. The vast majority of life cycle assessments (LCAs) are still conducted on technologies that are much closer to commercialization. This is despite wide recognition that the greatest potential to steer technology toward environmentally preferable outcomes exists at the earliest stages of technology development. The challenge is that this stage also coincides with the least available data, greatest uncertainty, and a paucity of analytic tools for addressing these challenges (Bergerson et al., 2019). While there has been some discussion of methods related to the assessment of emerging technologies, most studies to date are case studies related to specific technology applications, conditions, and regional settings. The spectrum of emerging technologies ranges from products or processes that are innovative and potentially disruptive, to the next generation of commercial products incorporating marginal changes to an incumbent technology (Bergerson et al., 2019). The challenges and opportunities across this spectrum require further discussion within the research community to address questions such as:• When is it useful to conduct an LCA and what questions can it reasonably answer at different stages of development and commercialization?• What aspects of the technology/adoption context need the most careful consideration?• With what other tools or techniques can/should the LCA be coupled?While the fundamental approach to conducting an LCA of emerging technologies is akin to that of LCA of existing technologies, emerging technologies pose additional challenges. Despite the growing interest in applying LCA at early stages of technology development, there is a lack of systematic guidance for LCA practitioners to evaluate emerging technologies. There remains confusion about how LCA can (or should) be used at different stages of technology development and market adoption. The procedures and tools employed to assess emerging technologies still tend to be applied on an ad hoc basis, with no clear guidelines as to what methods are available, applicable, or appropriate. While some authors review and provide recommendation...

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