Life Cycle Assessment
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
The European Commission's (IPPC) identified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as the "best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products". And highlighted the necessity for a Platform on LCA and to increase the availability of quality-assured life-cycle data. The EC, through its DG Environment and JRC, responded to these needs by establishing the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA).
- Since 2013 the ELPCA is supporting the Environmental Footprint (EF) development, which builds on ILCD format, for the data development.
- Since April 2018, the LCDN hosts EF compliant data, released from several providers, and also a dedicated node, maintained by JRC, hosting EF data on Representative Products stemming from the development of Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PECFRs).
Single Market for Green Products Initiative
The EC launched the Environmental Footprint (EF) Initiative under the Single Market Act, focusing on green products. The Environmental Footprint is designed to harmonize the many different methodologies that are available to calculate and communicate environmental information on products and organizations, covering the entire life cycle from cradle to grave (or back to cradle) and a wide range of environmental issues, including climate change, land use, ecotoxicity, particulate matter and others. The starting point of the initiative was to establish a harmonized methodology to enable companies and organizations to present and improve their environmental performance in a comparable manner.
The Environmental Footprint Pilots
The EC defined, with input from industry stakeholders as well as from academia and consultancy, the technical format, the environmental aspects to be considered and sector-specific guides on how to calculate the life cycle in the PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) for products and in the OEF (Organization Environmental Footprint) for organizations as methods for measuring environmental impacts.
Environmental Footprint Pilot Phase
During the EFPilot Phase, between 2013 and 2018, organizations from different industries tested the EC's environmental footprint approach and assisted in further developing the methods which are now documented in the appropriate guidelines for Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF). Life cycle assessment for the impact assessment of policies
The European Commission has released in 2015 a Communication on Better regulation (CEC 2015a) in order to improve the policy development process. The Communication has been complemented with a Better Regulation toolbox, which reports and describes models and methods for the Impact Assessment (IA) of policies. The IA of policies addresses all dimension of sustainability, i.e. economic, social and environmental. Life Cycle Analysis/Assessment (LCA) has been listed among the tools that aim at supporting the assessment of impact and benefits associated to different policy options.