Evaluating existing methodological approaches for prospective LCA at early technology - development stages

Integration of forecasting methods in LCA is essential in order to compare immature technologies with technologies already employed in industry. In this paper different existing methodological approaches were identified and evaluated with respect to their suitability to conduct prospective LCA at an early stage. A broad-based literature review was performed to monitor the existing methodological approaches. Qualitative and quantitative approaches using different methods to forecast the environmental impact of technologies were identified: Firstly, with the help of simple reduction factors or indicators, secondly with systematic reduction functions using modular influence estimations or economies of scale. In order to analyze the existing methods specific criteria for comparison were developed based on existing literature concerning data quality, structure and complexity, necessary effort and the implementation of forecasting. Then, a utility analysis was performed. The presented results are important to improve existing forecasting methods or to develop new alternatives.