Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
We aim to understand and predict the impact of multiple anthropogenic physical and chemical pressures on the environment in a life cycle context. Our work concentrates on three core issues:
- Life cycle impact assessment on a global scale
We aim to cover the complete cause-effect pathway from pressure to impacts in separate steps by modeling fate, exposure and effects of an environmental pressure to arrive at impacts on humans and ecosystems.
- Uncertainty and variability
We developed a framework to classify levels of uncertainty in LCI and LCIA and identified which tools are available to deal with them. Additionally, variability is studied, which represents real world differences between different geographical regions (spatial variability), technologies (technological variability) or different times (temporal variability).
- Life cycle assessment of new technologies
LCIA is used and further developed to compare the environmental sustainability of technologies to identify the preferable technology from an environmental perspective. We focus on technologies related to energy generation and water supply, e.g. renewables such as wind and solar, fossil and bioenergy, and wastewater treatment.
People:
Valerio Barbarossa
Joyce Bosmans
Tine Dammeier
Mélanie Douziech
Steef Hanssen
Mark Huijbregts
Mitchell van der Hulst
Kiane de Kleijne
Sandra Marquardt
Leo Posthuma
Wan Yee Lam
Rosalie van Zelm
Caterina Zillien
Last update: 29th of August 2019