How our LCA Technology will benefit LLCA customers and contribute to sustainability (click any topic to open):
Product environmental compliance
Given that the product's supply chain and the policies surrounding its manufacture will likely change over time, our software can offer additional capabilities such as region-specific and long-term compliance analysis. This capacity is nonexistent, at best rare, in LLCA toolsets. Our tool can also offer auditable tracing of the data that produces a given analysis result so that the compliance can be proven. While other tools can offer this to some degree, they cannot match the depth of our software’s auditability. Furthermore, we can reproduce any given analysis at a future date to show a comparison between previously available data and more recent data. Thus, we are able to show what effect data quality can have on the analysis process.
Supply chain optimization
Optimization per se is relatively rare in current LCA toolsets and is a major strength of our software. We can optimize on the basis of minimums and maximums (e.g. minimum energy use, minimum GHG footprint, maximum recyclability), on the basis of constraints (e.g. no upstream supply chain users of coal-fired power allowed), on the basis of data reliability (e.g. only use processes that have a low uncertainty as to their GHG footprint), or on the basis of policy (e.g. we believe that after 2020 carbon effluents will be taxed at $x per kg in country Y, but only half that much in country Z and after 2030 all sources of steel will have to originate from recycling facilities, worldwide.) It will also allow users to optimize their supply chain for their product over the next 30 years given these assumptions and provide a more comprehensive and long-term analysis than currently available.
Sustainable product design (SPD):
This tool is significantly more useful than the others when it comes to SPD. While supply chain optimization assumes a particular product, SPD leaves the product itself as a free variable. It thus subsumes supply chain optimization to look at the whole technological system of which a product might be part, over a decades-long span. This can allow forward-thinking users to begin looking at resource depletion issues and the associated financial and environmental costs associated with such events.
Sustainable product marketing
Along with product environmental compliance, sustainable product marketing involves entities using LCA to make the case that their product is “greener” than their competitor's. As standards and regulations continue to take shape across the world, this feature will become more and more desirable for both users of the software and consumers of products. The ability to precisely determine the environmental processes involved in a product’s manufacturing will help to reduce the number of companies who claim to produce “green” products without actually changing their manufacturing practices. Additionally, it will allow those who do make the required changes prove that their goods actually meet the requirements and standards for which customers are looking.
7. LCA Software Selection, Prof. Dr. Ir. Joeri Van Mierlo, Department of Electrotechnical Engineering and Energy Technology (ETEC) Vrije Universiteit Brussel, June 2007. 8 Cooper, J.S.; Fava, J. (2006), "Life Cycle Assessment Practitioner Survey: Summary of Results", Journal of Industrial Ecology. 9. Id. 10. http://www.lcacenter.org/LCA9/special/Dynamic-LCA.html 11. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/rareearth-metal-prices-spike-as-china-stockpiles-supplies-2300303.html