Life cycle thinking tools: Life cycle assessment, life cycle costing and social life cycle assessment

Toniolo, Sara; Tosato, Roberta Chiara; Gambaro, Fabio; Ren, Jingzheng

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-818355-7.00003-8

Cited by 32 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…For all these reasons, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) decided to define a standard procedure to perform a LCA analysis in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 regulations [25,26]. The life cycle approach became so important that it has been extended from the environmental analyses to the economic and social evaluations with Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and social LCA [27]. The tools necessary to perform a LCA analysis are a database, provided by Ecoinvent [28] to collect the information for the model definition, and a computational software, in this case openLCA [29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and economic optima of solar home systems design: A combined LCA and LCC approach

Rossi

Heleno

Basosi

et al. 2020

Science of The Total Environment

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This paper compares the economic and environmental optimal design of Solar Home Systems (SHSs) and explores the role of economic incentives (such as tariffs and technology costs) in approximating the two optima. To achieve that, we present a methodology for the environmental and economic evaluation of grid-connected SHSs: user-scale electric systems involving a photovoltaic (PV) power system and a battery energy storage system. The proposed methodology is based on a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization, life cycle assessment and life cycle costing. This methodological framework is applied to a case study involving a typical SHS installation in Italy. The results of the environmental optimal design brought to the evaluation of a 3.25 kW PV assisted by 8.66 kWh of nickel cobalt manganese batteries, whereas the costs of the SHS are minimized by a small PV system (less than 1 kW). Results underline that the environmental optimal configurations rely on battery technologies, which entails a significant cost compared to the grid connection. In contrast, the economic optimal design solutions is less impactful than the grid mix both from an environmental and economic points of view. Thanks to a reduction of batteries and PV costs, the environmental impact of the economic optimal design is expected to decrease in the future.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and economic optima of solar home systems design: A combined LCA and LCC approach

Rossi

Heleno

Basosi

et al. 2020

Science of The Total Environment

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“…Broadly, the life cycle sustainability approach (Kloepffer, 2008; Toniolo et al, 2020; Visentin et al, 2020) has become helpful in addressing different impacts of the product supply chain (López et al, 2020), waste management (Menikpura et al, 2012) and local policies (Federico et al, 2006; Feleki et al, 2018; Scipioni et al, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment applied to waste management in Italy: A mini-review of characteristics and methodological perspectives for local assessment

et al. 2021

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) and related tools are commonly used to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of waste treatment scenarios. This manuscript presents a mini-review of studies published over the last 10 years in Italy and aims to investigate how life cycle thinking tools are applied to assess the environmental sustainability of local-level waste policies. Results reveal that different waste flows, technologies and policies have been investigated independently and in varying detail. Review suggests that boundary selection significantly affects LCA results; integration of different waste systems is therefore crucial to avoid spatial or temporal shifts of environmental impacts. Moreover, the description of methodological characteristics, limitations and transversal aspects of Italian waste management studies allows various stakeholders to assess the reliability of past and future research for waste policy planning and rebound effects prevention. This review also highlights the need to define minimum requirements of transparency and ease of reporting of the studies to private and public stakeholders. Finally, the paper investigates whether using both the organisational LCA and the life cycle sustainability approach for the overall waste management process may be useful to develop a standard method to address multi-functionalities and multiple sites.

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“…Sustainability requires an assessment of the environmental [68], social [69] and economic [70] impacts of products, processes, and organizations [71,72]. Currently, the most widely used framework for these assessments is Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) [73], which considers all the phases and processes that contribute to the manufacturing of a product, including the use and end-of-life phases [74], according to the cradle-to-grave approach [75]. The perspective of analysis can be the product [76], the process [77], or the organization [72] that controls manufacturing.…”

Section: Proposition 2 (P2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Technological Sustainability or Sustainable Technology? A Multidimensional Vision of Sustainability in Manufacturing

et al. 2021

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The topic of sustainability is becoming one of the strongest drivers of change in the marketplace by transforming into an element of competitiveness and an integral part of business strategy. Particularly in the manufacturing sector, a key role is played by technological innovations that allow companies to minimize the impact of their business on the environment and contribute to enhancing the value of the societies in which they operate. Technological process can be a lever to generate sustainable behaviors, confirming how innovation and sustainability constitute an increasingly close pair. However, it emerges that the nature of this relationship is explored by researchers and considered by practitioners almost exclusively in terms of the degree of sustainability of technological solutions. Lacking is an in-depth exploration of how a product or process, in addition to being environmentally and socio-economically sustainable, must or can also be technologically sustainable. This research therefore aims to build a theoretical foundation for technological sustainability seen as a possible fourth dimension of sustainable development.

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Life cycle thinking tools: Life cycle assessment, life cycle costing and social life cycle assessment

Cited by 32 publications

References 40 publications

Environmental and economic optima of solar home systems design: A combined LCA and LCC approach

Environmental and economic optima of solar home systems design: A combined LCA and LCC approach

Life cycle assessment applied to waste management in Italy: A mini-review of characteristics and methodological perspectives for local assessment

Technological Sustainability or Sustainable Technology? A Multidimensional Vision of Sustainability in Manufacturing

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