EASETECH calculates the characterised/ normalised/ weighted impacts based on the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) result and the characterisation/normalisation/ weighting factors of the specified Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method. Each method is composed of different impact categories, and each impact category consists of a list of elementary exchanges and their associated characterisation factors with a defined unit. All the results can be displayed per process or per substance.
EASETECH already includes several impact categories: e.g. recommended by ILCD, IPCC 2007 and 2013, ReCiPe 2008. All of the methods can be calculated both with and without long-term emissions. If needed more detailed files regarding the implementation of LCA impact categories can be obtained. Furthermore, the user can easily add new impact categories manually or importing them from excel files.
In the same way, EASETECH already includes normalisation reference: e.g. Prosuite project (Laurent et al., 2013), ILCD recommended for European (Benini et al., 2014; Sala et al., 2015) and global (Benini et al., 2015) projects, ReCiPe factors for both Europe and the world. No weighting factors are already present in the software but can be easily added by the user.
Example of already included impact categories
ILCD recommended (last update, version 1.0.9):
- Climate change
- Stratospheric ozone depletion
- Human toxicity, cancer effects
- Human toxicity, non-cancer effects
- Particulate matter/Respiratory inorganics
- Ionizing radiation, human health
- Photochemical ozone formation, human health
- Acidification
- Eutrophication terrestrial
- Eutrophication freshwater
- Eutrophication marine
- Eco-toxicity freshwater
- Resource depletion, mineral, fossils and renewables
Land use, water depletion were not included because of their strong geographical uncertainties.
ReCiPe 2008 (last update, version 1.11):
- Climate change
- Ozone depletion
- Terrestrial acidification
- Freshwater eutrophication
- Marine eutrophication
- Human toxicity
- Photochemical oxidant formation
- Particulate matter formation
- Terrestrial eco-toxicity
- Freshwater eco-toxicity
- Marine eco-toxicity
- Ionising radiation
- Metal depletion
- Fossil depletion
Land occupation, Natural Land Transformation and Water depletion have not been added to EASETECH due to their strong uncertainty due to geographical variation.
REFERENCES
Benini, L., Mancini, L., Sala, S., Schau, E., Manfredi, S., Pant, R., 2014. Normalisation method and data for Environmental Footprints - JRC Technical Reports. doi:10.2788/16415
Benini, L., Sala, S., Pant, R., 2015. Global normalization factors for ILCD compliant midpoint impact categories - EC-JRC internal draft report.
Clavreul, J., Baumeister, H., Christensen, T.H., Damgaard, A., 2014. An environmental assessment system for environmental technologies. Environ. Model. Softw. 60, 18–30. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.06.007
Laurent, A., Hauschild, M.Z., Golsteijn, L., Simas, M., And, J.F., Wood, R., 2013. Deliverable 5.2: Normalisation factors for environmental, economic and socio-economic indicators. PROJECT: Development and application of a standardized methodology for the PROspective SUstaInability assessment of TEchnologies. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sala, S., Benini, L., Mancini, L., Pant, R., 2015. Integrated assessment of environmental impact of Europe in 2010: data sources and extrapolation strategies for calculating normalisation factors. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 20, 1568–1585. doi:10.1007/s11367-015-0958-8