Life Cycle Assessment : Theory and Practice

This book is a uniquely pedagogical while still comprehensive state-of-the-art description of LCA-methodology and its broad range of applications. The five parts of the book conveniently provide: I) the history and context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with its central role as quantitative and scientifically-based tool supporting society’s transitioning towards a sustainable economy; II) all there is to know about LCA methodology illustrated by a red-thread example which evolves as the reader advances; III) a wealth of information on a broad range of LCA applications with dedicated chapters on policy development, prospective LCA, life cycle management, waste, energy, construction and building, nanotechnology, agrifood, transport, and LCA-related concepts such as footprinting, ecolabelling,design for environment, and cradle to cradle. IV) A cookbook giving the reader recipes for all the concrete actions needed to perform an LCA. V) An appendix with an LCA report template, a full example LCA report serving as inspiration for students who write their first LCA report, and a more detailed overview of existing LCIA methods and their similarities and differences.

Dr. Michael Hauschild is professor in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Environment and Resource Dimensions within Products and Systems. He is Head of the Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment at Technical University of Denmark, Department of Management Engineering. Michael Hauschild has 20 years of experience in environmental life cycle assessment of products and systems. He is co-receiver of the Nordic Council’s Great Nature and Environment Award 12 November 1997,  co-receiver of the Danish part of the European Better Environment Awards for Industry, EBEAFI ‘97, and in 2014 recipient of the Aase and Ejnar Danielsen Foundation's environmental award of quarter of a million DKK. His pioneering work in LCA has helped to define the research area at Technical University of Denmark, which today is one of the international powerhouses for quantifying sustainability. According to the bibliometric investigation (Chen et al.: A bibliometric investigation of life cycle assessment research in the web of science databases. International Journal of LCA, DOI 10.1007/s11367-014-0777-3), Technical University of Denmark is the most cited university within the LCA discipline over the last 16 years.

Since 2014 Ralph K. Rosenbaum is the Director of the Industrial Chair for Environmental and Social Sustainability Assessment “ELSA-PACT” hosted by the French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA) in Montpellier, France. Passionate about quantitative environmental sustainability assessment including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) since 1997, Ralph Rosenbaum is an expert in environmental modelling, LCA methodology development, and teaching related to sustainability and environmental assessment. He is co-author of the consensus model for the evaluation of comparative toxicity USEtox and the LCIA methods IMPACT 2002+ and Impact World+. He is subject editor of the International Journal ofLife Cycle Assessment on the theme of impacts of chemicals on human health as well as vice-president and founding member of the International Life Cycle Academy based in Barcelona. Born in Germany, Ralph Rosenbaum finished his Environmental Engineering degree at the Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2003 and defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland in 2006. In early 2007 he joined the team of CIRAIG at the École Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada as researcher and lecturer and was then appointed Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Copenhagen in 2010.