What is an LCA?

LCA stands for life-cycle assessment and is referred to in Danish as a life cycle assessment.

An LCA is thus an assessment of a product’s properties throughout its entire operational period – or life, if you will.

This means that a range of data is documented about the product’s impact on climate and environment throughout the entire value chain from production and distribution to use, as well as recycling (second life) or disposal (end-of-life). An LCA is also popularly called a “cradle to grave” analysis.

Read more about greenhouse gases and air pollution in the knowledge article “Basic knowledge about climate and environment“.

Emissions are also called emissions and can be divided into the following three scopes from an LCA perspective:

• Emissions during product creation
  • Raw material
  • Treatment and production
  • Distribution
• Emissions during product use
  • Upstream emissions
  • Downstream emissions
• Emissions during recycling or disposal of product
  • Second-life – refurbish
  • End-of-life

Why is an LCA important?

An LCA contributes to optimizing the existing production of goods and making sustainable choices for your own production and operations. In this way, you can illustrate efforts to reduce the climate and environmental impact in your company, which can, among other things, contribute to an ESG report.

Read more: “What is an ESG?”

LCA forms the basis for a construction product, which must have a so-called environmental product declaration, abbreviated EPD (Environmental Production Declaration).

Read more: “What is an EPD?”

LCA documentation is used, for example, for the building regulations, where limit values are set for the impact of emissions in new constructions. Read more in “Climate requirements for new construction affect the entire industry“.

What are upstream and downstream?

A product will often be associated with a number of burdens on our climate and environment when used. To illustrate where the emissions come from when you use a given product, the effects are divided into two perspectives; upstream and downstream emissions (indirect and direct emissions).

What are upstream emissions?

Upstream emissions are the burden that your company contributes to decentrally. It is, for example, the resource consumption in the form of fuel for engines, electricity, gas, water, and heat, which during processing and distribution burdens the climate and environment before it comes into use by you as a consumer.

What are downstream emissions?

Downstream emissions are about the direct burdens that the product emits directly during operation, and which a company can control itself. It can, for example, be the emissions that come from own production facilities or from the exhaust of own vehicles when you burn fuel.

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