Life Cycle Assessment under Uncertainty: A Scoping Review

Zahir Barahmand () and Marianne S. Eikeland
Additional contact information
Zahir Barahmand: Department of Process, Energy and Environmental Technology, University of South-Eastern Norway, 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway
Marianne S. Eikeland: Department of Process, Energy and Environmental Technology, University of South-Eastern Norway, 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway

World, 2022, vol. 3, issue 3, 1-26

Abstract: Today, life cycle assessment (LCA) is the most widely used approach to model and calculate the environmental impacts of products and processes. The results of LCAs are often said to be deterministic, even though the real-life applications are uncertain and vague. The uncertainty, which may be simply ignored, is one of the key factors influencing the reliability of LCA outcomes. Numerous sources of uncertainty in LCA are classified in various ways, such as parameter and model uncertainty, choices, spatial variability, temporal variability, variability between sources and objects, etc. Through a scoping review, the present study aims to identify and assess the frequency with which LCA studies reflect the uncertainty and what are the tools to cope with the uncertainty to map the knowledge gaps in the field to reveal the challenges and opportunities to have a robust LCA model. It is also investigated which database, methodology, software, etc., have been used in the life cycle assessment process. The results indicate that the most significant sources of uncertainty were in the model and process parameters, data variability, and the use of different methodologies and databases. The probabilistic approach or stochastic modeling, using numerical methods such as Monte Carlo simulation, was the dominating tool to cope with the uncertainty. There were four dominant LCA methodologies: CML, ReCiPe, IMPACT 2002+, and TRACI. The most commonly used LCA software and databases were SimaPro ® and Ecoinvent ® , respectively.

Keywords: life cycle assessment; LCA; uncertainty; environmental impact; scoping review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G17 G18 L21 L22 L25 L26 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 R51 R52 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/3/3/39/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/3/3/39/ (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:jworld:v:3:y:2022:i:3:p:39-717:d:910531

Access Statistics for this article

World is currently edited by Ms. Cassie Hu

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