This course focuses on understanding Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods to quantify product environmental footprints. It will provide you insights in both inventory modelling (identifying resource extraction and emissions along the life cycle) and impact assessment (quantifying effects of resource extraction and emissions on the environment, biodiversity, and humans).
The life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling includes prospective assessments (i.e., estimating future or industrial scale emissions from current or lab-scale emissions), and hybrid assessments (i.e., integrating specific product-level LCA with comprehensive sector-level multiregional input output data). The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) covers modelling approaches of comprehensive LCIA methodologies. In addition, you learn to deal with uncertainty in the environmental footprints due to variability and uncertain parameters in the LCI and LCIA data.
The learning activities include lectures and computer exercises in which you use Excel and Python to practice LCA modelling on your own laptop. The course is taught by experts in (prospective and hybrid) LCI and LCIA methods, including Francesca Verones from NTNU (Norway), as well as Anne Ottenbros, Koen Kuipers, and Rosalie van Zelm from Radboud University (the Netherlands). Before the start of the course you are asked to prepare and read through the material. You are asked to do a simple modelling exercise to have a head start during the scheduled course weeks.
Learning objectives
- Understand and implement prospective life cycle inventory models
- Understand and implement hybrid life cycle assessment models
- Analyse an environmental problem via a cause-effect chain to develop impact assessment indicators
- Describe elements of impact assessment categories and implement impact modeling
- Identify, quantify, and analyse uncertainty in life cycle assessment models
