How to Conduct Prospective Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies? A Systematic Review and Methodological Guidance

Nils Thonemann, Anna Schulte and Daniel Maga
Additional contact information
Nils Thonemann: Department of Sustainability and Resources Management, Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT, 46047 Oberhausen, Germany
Anna Schulte: Department of Sustainability and Resources Management, Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT, 46047 Oberhausen, Germany
Daniel Maga: Department of Sustainability and Resources Management, Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT, 46047 Oberhausen, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: Emerging technologies are expected to contribute to environmental sustainable development. However, throughout the development of novel technologies, it is unknown whether emerging technologies can lead to reduced environmental impacts compared to a potentially displaced mature technology. Additionally, process steps suspected to be environmental hotspots can be improved by process engineers early in the development of the emerging technology. In order to determine the environmental impacts of emerging technologies at an early stage of development, prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) should be performed. However, consistency in prospective LCA methodology is lacking. Therefore, this article develops a framework for a prospective LCA in order to overcome the methodological inconsistencies regarding prospective LCAs. The methodological framework was developed using literature on prospective LCAs of emerging technologies, and therefore, a literature review on prospective LCAs was conducted. We found 44 case studies, four review papers, and 17 papers on methodological guidance. Three main challenges for conducting prospective LCAs are identified: Comparability, data, and uncertainty challenges. The issues in defining the aim, functionality, and system boundaries of the prospective LCAs, as well as problems with specifying LCIA methodologies, comprise the comparability challenge. Data availability, quality, and scaling are issues within the data challenge. Finally, uncertainty exists as an overarching challenge when applying a prospective LCA. These three challenges are especially crucial for the prospective assessment of emerging technologies. However, this review also shows that within the methodological papers and case studies, several approaches exist to tackle these challenges. These approaches were systematically summarized within a framework to give guidance on how to overcome the issues when conducting prospective LCAs of emerging technologies. Accordingly, this framework is useful for LCA practitioners who are analyzing early-stage technologies. Nevertheless, further research is needed to develop appropriate scale-up schemes and to include uncertainty analyses for a more in-depth interpretation of results.

Keywords: prospective life cycle assessment (LCA); emerging technologies; systematic review; case studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/3/1192/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/3/1192/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:3:p:1192-:d:317681

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().