Simplified lifecycle assessment for the early design stages of industrial products

Simplified Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies are very useful tools in the early design stages for estimating the environmental impacts of product alternatives and for predicting environmental costs or burdens for manufacturers. A new methodology, presented in this paper, is based on the analysis of full LCA case studies. It calculates the product's Environmental Performance Indicator by using two sets of energy-based and material-based Impact Drivers. Further simplification can be achieved by grouping the products according to their material/energy ratio and by using simple regression equations. A wide range of case studies is used to compare the simplified results with the full LCA results.