Safe and Efficient Chemistry by Design ‐ Mistra SafeChem Phase 2
Prospective LCA of emerging technologies (KTH/SEED, M1-M42)
Project name: Safe and Efficient Chemistry by Design ‐ Mistra SafeChem Phase 2
Funding:
Mistra
Project period: 2024-07-01 — 2028-06-30
Participating universities/companies/organisations:
IVL
coordinates and also collaborates with
CBH
at KTH.
Sustainability claims of novel materials/products/processes are not uncommon, but without being substantiated by quantitative assessment. For instance, when replacing non-renewable raw materials with renewable ones, there is always a risk of burden-shifting along the life cycle or between impact categories.
Such trade-offs must be considered and handled in the R&D phase of new technologies. It is not until quite recently that LCA to assess emerging technologies was identified as a “branch” of its own – prospective LCA (pLCA) or ex-ante LCA. pLCA addresses two important considerations: i) The design paradox: At early stages of technological development (when data is sparse), there are many degrees of freedom to influence the development. On the other hand, as technology matures (and data becomes more available) the possibility to influence design choices becomes more limited. ii) Solving problems in the future with current technology development: To solve future problems, we must consider the future context in which the new technology will exist, to avoid the risk that technology optimized for the current context will be sub-optimal in a future context. Hence, strategic use of LCA requires prospective approaches when modelling both the foreground and background systems.
In T5.6 we will collaborate with case studies focusing on distinctly different types of green chemistry, to combine methodology development and assessment of novel processes. We aim to build on approaches for scaling up foreground inventory data from lab-scale to industrial scale applied already in phase I, developed at KTH, and the broader pLCA community; as well as methodology for early stage identification of critical environmental aspects, 26 to consider the role of socio-technical systems to make well-founded assumptions about future background markets and future resource availability, and for system wide integration of future technology and production mixes in background databases. Archetypal challenges in relation to these prospective dimensions in the context of emerging green chemistry will be identified.
The ambition is to propose a “toolbox” specifically for pLCA of green chemistry and to apply this in the case studies, with specific focus on the possibilities to reduce the exposure of humans and the environment to hazardous chemicals along product and service life cycles.