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Challenges in Life Cycle Assessment: An Overview of Current Gaps and Research Needs

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Background and Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of current gaps of and challenges for LCA structured into inventory, impact assessment, generic and evolving aspects. A total of 34 gaps and challenges were identified. These include challenges like ‘allocation’, ‘uncertainty’ or ‘biodiversity’, as well as issues like ‘littering’, ‘animal well-being’ or ‘positive impacts’ which are not covered as often in the existing LCA literature. Each of these gaps is described by a high-level overview of the topic and its relevance to LCA, and the state of the art in terms of literature and potential solutions, if any, is presented.

The motivation for such an overview is two-fold: First, robust, sustainable and credible use of LCA should avoid the over-interpretation of LCA results without proper consideration of its gaps and limitations. Second, these gaps and challenges represent research needs for the scientific LCA community and hopefully inspire further progress in method development.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the support of the German Research Foundation DFG for funding some of the research presented here as part of the Collaborative Research Center ‘Sustainable Manufacturing’ (SFB 1026).

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  1. Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Office Z1, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Matthias Finkbeiner, Robert Ackermann, Vanessa Bach, Markus Berger, Gerhard Brankatschk, Ya-Ju Chang, Marina Grinberg, Annekatrin Lehmann, Julia Martínez-Blanco, Nikolay Minkov, Sabrina Neugebauer, René Scheumann, Laura Schneider & Kirana Wolf

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Correspondence to Matthias Finkbeiner .

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    Walter Klöpffer

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Finkbeiner, M. et al. (2014). Challenges in Life Cycle Assessment: An Overview of Current Gaps and Research Needs. In: Klöpffer, W. (eds) Background and Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment. LCA Compendium – The Complete World of Life Cycle Assessment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8697-3_7

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