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Lifting the fog on characteristics and limitations of hybrid LCA—a reply to “Does hybrid LCA with a complete system boundary yield adequate results for product promotion?” by Yi Yang (Int J Life Cycle Assess 22(3):456–406, doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1256-9

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Notes

  1. As a thought experiment, think of an aggregated one sector-by-one sector matrix describing the flows within a system or an economy. This matrix has a density of 100%. It can also be theoretically disaggregated until reaching one process or sector per flow (to keep its rank equal to its dimension n), yielding a diagonal matrix with density n/n 2 = 1/n, the theoretical density minimum. The same applies to these matrices’ Leontief inverse.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Enrico Benetto for his valuable comments.

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Author notes

  1. Thomas Gibon and Thomas Schaubroeck contributed equally to this paper.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 5 Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux, 4362, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Thomas Gibon & Thomas Schaubroeck

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  1. Thomas Gibon
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  2. Thomas Schaubroeck
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Correspondence to Thomas Schaubroeck.

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Responsible editor: Mary Ann Curran

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Gibon, T., Schaubroeck, T. Lifting the fog on characteristics and limitations of hybrid LCA—a reply to “Does hybrid LCA with a complete system boundary yield adequate results for product promotion?” by Yi Yang (Int J Life Cycle Assess 22(3):456–406, doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1256-9. Int J Life Cycle Assess 22, 1005–1008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-017-1291-1

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