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Asking Instead of Telling — Recommendations for Developing Life Cycle Assessment Within Technical R&D Projects

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Progress in Life Cycle Assessment 2019

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Abstract

Sustainability assessment for emerging technologies is a prerequisite for sustainable process and product development. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an accepted method for quantifying and assessing the potential environmental impacts of product systems. In general, an LCA is conducted on mature technologies or an industrial scale. Nevertheless, the design or development stage provides important information on potential environmental impacts and is rated to determine the grand part of environmental impacts of new technologies and products. In this study, practice-oriented recommendations for LCA practitioners and other project partners of inter-disciplinary and inter-organizational R&D projects are derived in order to enhance the integration and implementation of LCAs in technical R&D projects. The observations are presented as three main recommendations: Create common knowledge, consider LCA as part of the R&D and adapt and revise. LCA at the R&D stage can contribute to enhanced knowledge sharing and, most importantly, can support the entire R&D project by generating information on the environmental performance of the new processes and products and revealing the window of opportunity for sustainable process and product development.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by the SmartLi project under Horizon 2020/BBI-JU, the Austrian research promotion agency (FFG) under the scope of the COMET program (wood comet 865905).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Institute of Marketing and Innovation, Gregor-Mendel-Straße 33, 1180, Vienna, Austria

    Miriam Lettner

  2. University of Applied Sciences Kufstein Tirol, Andreas-Hofer-Straße 7, 6330, Kufstein, Austria

    Miriam Lettner

  3. Wood K plus — Competence Center for Wood Composites and Wood Chemistry, Kompetenzzentrum Holz GmbH, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040, Linz, Austria

    Franziska Hesser

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  1. Miriam Lettner
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Correspondence to Franziska Hesser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Life Cycle Engineering GaBi, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Stefan Albrecht

  2. Life Cycle Engineering GaBi, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Matthias Fischer

  3. Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Philip Leistner

  4. Material Flow Management and Resource Economy, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany

    Liselotte Schebek

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Lettner, M., Hesser, F. (2021). Asking Instead of Telling — Recommendations for Developing Life Cycle Assessment Within Technical R&D Projects. In: Albrecht, S., Fischer, M., Leistner, P., Schebek, L. (eds) Progress in Life Cycle Assessment 2019. Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50519-6_13

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