Environmental Management Systems

Lecture 19_Life cycle impact

assessment

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LCIA: Life cycle impact assessment

Life cycle impact assessment is the phase in which the
set of results of the inventory analysis is further processed and
interpreted in terms of environmental impacts and societal
preferences

This phase of an LCA is the evaluation of

potential human health and
environmental impacts of the environmental resources and
releases identified during the Life cycle inventory analysis
Ecological effects
should also address resource depletion

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LCIA: Life cycle impact assessment

Key concept in this component is that of stressors
What are stressors????
which are items identified in the inventory analysis
that have the potential to produce changes in the
environmental properties
For example, lead in motor vehicle exhaust is a
stressor because lead is the systematic poison for
animals and humans

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LCIA: Life cycle impact assessment

If a product or process is emitting greenhouse gases, the
increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may
contribute to global warming
Processes that result in the discharge of excess
nutrients into bodies of water may lead to
eutrophication
The relationship among stressors and the
environment are developed by the environmental
science community
Potential impact categories are found out

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Why conduct Life cycle impact assessment?

Although much can be learned about a process by
considering the LCI, LCIA provides a more meaningful
basis to make comparisons
For example, although we know that 9, 000 tons of
carbon dioxide and 5,000 tons of methane released into
the atmosphere are both harmful, an LCIA can determine
which could have a greater potential impact
Results of an LCIA show the relative difference in
potential environmental impacts for each option
For example, an LCIA could determine which product / process
causes more global warming potential

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LCIA: Life cycle impact assessment

Using science based characterization factors, an LCIA
can calculate the impacts each environmental release
has on problems such as smog or global warming
First stage of LCA impact assessment is the
identification of stressors and environmental
concerns to which they are related
Result of this stage is an estimation of burdens, that is,
of potential impacts

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LCI results

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Midpoints

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Fig: General view of the structure of an impact assessment method.

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Impact assessment
LCI results are characterized to produce a no. of impact
category indicators
According to ISO, one must document the environmental
relevance of each indicator by describing the link to the
endpoints
Endpoints can be selected by the practitioner as
long as the reasons for including or excluding
endpoints are clearly documented

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Impact assessment
An important help in the process of selecting impact
categories is the definition of so called endpoints
Endpoints are to be understood as issues of
environmental
concern,
like
human
health,
extinction of species, availability of resources for
future generation etc
After that impact categories can be selected, as long as
the environmental model that links the impact category
to the endpoint is clearly described

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Environmental Impact Categories

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Key steps of a LCIA

1. Selection and definition of Impact Categories:
identifying relevant environmental impact categories
2. Classification: assigning LCI results to the impact
categories
3. Characterization: Modelling LCI impacts within impact
categories using science based conversion factors
4. Normalization: expressing potential impacts in ways
that can be compared

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Key steps of a LCIA

5. Grouping: sorting or ranking the indicators

6. Weighting: emphasizing the most important potential

impacts

7. Evaluating and reporting LCIA results

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Step-2: Classification
Classification is the assignment of items from the
inventory assessment to selected impact categories.
Steps Involved in classification:
1.

Each item from the life-cycle inventory is assigned to

one or more of the categories so that impacts can be
aggregated in a meaningful way.

2.

Development of stressors for each impact category

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Classification of pollutants

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Step-3: Characterization
It uses science based conversion factors, called
characterization factors,
to convert and combine the LCI results into representative
indicators of impacts to human and ecological health

Characterization factors also are commonly referred to

as equivalent factors
Characterization provides a way to directly compare the
LCI results within each impact category

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Step-3: Characterization
Thus, the impact category indicator result for global
warming can be calculated by multiplying the life
cycle inventory result with the characterization
factors
Inventory data x Characterization Factor = Impact
Indicators
Characterization can put these different quantities of
chemicals on an equal scale to determine the
amount of impact each one has on global warming

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Step: 4 Normalization
Normalization is an LCIA tool used to express impact
indicator data in a way that can be compared among
impact categories.
Main aim of normalizing:
Indicator which results in better understanding the
relative importance and magnitude of these results for
each product system under study
It is a procedure needed to show what extent an impact
category has a significant contribution to the overall
environmental problem

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Step: 4 Normalization
This procedure normalizes the indicator results by dividing by
a selected reference value.
ISO 14042 defines normalization as calculation of the
magnitude of indicator results relative to reference
information.
Reference information may relate to a given community (e.g.
The India, Europe or the world), person (e.g. a American
citizen) or other system, over a given period of time.

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Step: 4 Normalization
There are numerous methods of selecting a reference
value, including:
total emissions or resource use for a given area that may be
global, regional, or local
total emissions or resource use for a given area on a per capita
basis
highest value among all options