Harmonised Life Cycle Assessment methods for sustainable and circular BIO based systems

EU’s Climate Target Plan goals are compelling all the economic sectors to drastically reduce GHG emissions. As a result, a global shift from fossil-based feedstocks and processes to bio-based systems is being gradually carried out due to the depletion and significant environmental impacts of fossil resources.

To facilitate the green transition of the European industry, a more applicable and realistic environmental assessment of bio-based systems is being demanded as a way to demonstrate the improved performance of bio-based products versus its unsustainable counterparts, and identify the best available technologies, to promote the sustainability of industrial procedures and fulfil the zeropollution objectives encouraged by the European Commission.

In this context, the LCA4BIO project aims at developing and validating a new set of improved, harmonized, precise, reliable and applicable assessment methodologies to properly evaluate environmental impacts and circularity in bio-based systems, that can be applied in certification schemes, thus enabling the international trade of this type of products. Additionally, LCA4BIO will address the development of new prospective life cycle assessment methodologies, considering up-scaling and future scenarios via Integrated Assessment Models with manageable levels of uncertainty, for an accurate comparison between potential environmental impacts of emerging bio-based technologies and current systems in the market.

To do that, different stakeholders in the bioeconomy value chain will be involved in a co-creation process that will permit to consider their requirements, and test the adequateness of the methodologies developed by the LCA4BIO partners. The new approaches developed in LCA4BIO are expected to stimulate the growth of the European bio-based sectors that could lead to reduce the GHG emissions and other environmental impacts, and promote circularity processes along the economy and society.

In LCA4BIO the Department of Sustainability of Planning of AAU is leading A work Package on trade-offs and synergies caused by the growth of bio-based systems and is involved in several work packages focusing on the development of advanced circularity and climate impact metrics for biobased products, on improving prospective methods for the assessment of new biobased technologies as well as improving methods for uncertainty analysis in this context, and in the application and testing of the new methods and tools in real-world case studies in collaboration with the project's international industry and research parthers.

LCABIO is funded by the Horizon Europe programme with a grant of 3.5 M euro of which 500 k euro granted to AAU.