SPF Competencies Methods
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Life cycle assessments help to estimate the consumption of resources (materials and embodied energy) and the environmental impact of products and services throughout their life cycle «from cradle to grave». The method provides valuable information, which, in addition to technical and economic factors, can be of central importance for decision-making.
In the research and development projects of SPF, life cycle assessments are regularly used to assess energy systems and their components from an ecological point of view (CO₂ emissions, primary energy consumption, ...). For this purpose, databases such as Ecoinvent and the LCA analysis software SimaPro are used.
Example projects in which LCA has been applied are High-Ice, CombiVolt, HybridStock.