The Third Wave of LCA as the “Decade of Consolidation”

Abstract

Several authors have pointed out the importance of systems thinking, and have considered both environmental and social aspects (holistic perspective) of sustainability assessment in the past. Sustainability assessment tools which integrate different aspects (e.g., environmental/social aspects) in order to identify negative impacts have already been developed. Common tools used to assess environmental, social, or economic impacts include the life cycle assessment (LCA), social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) approaches. The goal of the present study was to investigate how and to what extent the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, economic; holistic sustainability perspective) have been integrated into the field of LCA. A topic modeling method was applied to examine whether the emphasis placed on integrating environmental, social, and economic aspects in sustainability assessment has resulted in a more comprehensive application of the LCA approach. The results show that topics related to energy and infrastructure are currently prevailing, and that topics related to methods have been decreasing since 1997. A minor discussion of social aspects and a lack of discussion on economic aspects were identified in the present study. These results do not support the predicted “decade of life cycle sustainability assessment.” Consequently, a new period of LCA extension and application is predicted, namely, the third wave of LCA as the “decade of consolidation.” During this period, the LCA framework will be enhanced to reduce existing practical and methodological difficulties and integrate environmental and social aspects in a sustainability assessment to support global sustainable development.

Comparing the incomparable? A review of methodical aspects in the sustainability assessment of wood in vehicles

“…The examined study period was between 1990 and July 2018. The starting year of 1990 for the present study is adequate since the E-LCA literature started to emerge at this time (Zimek et al 2019) and S-LCA later than the E-LCA literature. To identify the most relevant case studies, the literature research was limited to peer-reviewed articles and primary studies in English.…”

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Design for Sustainable Public Transportation: LCA-Based Tooling for Guiding Early Design Priorities

“…Academic interest in life cycle sustainability assessment has seen a rapid rise in the last decade, covering a broad range of methodological discussions as well as focused topics [16,17]. Although the exact understanding of environmental sustainability and its assessment varies per company, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to facilitate more sustainable decision-making is widely recognized as the main approach and the most suitable basis to evaluate environmental sustainability [18][19][20].…”

Energy Retrofitting of a Buildings’ Envelope: Assessment of the Environmental, Economic and Energy (3E) Performance of a Cork-Based Thermal Insulating Rendering Mortar

“…In the research for this study, it was found that most studies of the building's envelope only comprise part of the LCA, mainly Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) studies and there are very few studies that comprise the 3E LCA, including the economic assessment, and all its different stages [15][16][17]. Therefore, using this method along with this case study is an innovative approach, and an improvement compared to previous studies with analogous building assemblies and objectives.…”