LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment, a methodology that guides the entire linear infrastructure industry and fosters sustainability. This methodology revolutionises our way of conceiving infrastructure and deserves to be democratised.
Life Cycle Assessment isn’t the conundrum you think it is. As LCA aids decision-making, it represents an opportunity for your projects to reduce their impact.
Life Cycle Assessment: Definition
Life Cycle Assessment is a systematic, scientific methodology for evaluating the environmental impacts of all stages of a product, process, or service’s life cycle.
In linear infrastructure, LCA scrutinises every step of your entire project, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal:
- Raw material extraction
- Transportation to manufacturing
- Manufacturing
- Distribution
- Construction
- Use & maintenance
- End-of-life: Recycling, disposal…
What norms frame Life Cycle Assessment?
Since LCA relies upon a scientific methodology, it implies that international norms exist to ensure the conducting of robust and trustworthy life cycle assessments.
Norms to define Life Cycle Assessment
ISO 14040:2006 - Environmental management — Life cycle assessment — Principles and framework
It describes the principles and framework for LCA, including the four main phases:
- Goal and scope definitions
- Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI)
- Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)
- Interpretation
ISO 14044:2006 - Environmental management — Life cycle assessment — Requirements and guidelines
This standard provides the requirements and guidelines for LCA. It complements ISO 14040 with more detailed specifications.
It includes data quality, critical review, and reporting requirements. When applying LCA to infrastructure projects, ISO 14044 is highly relevant to assure the quality of LCA study.
A norm that frames Life Cycle Assessment for construction materials
EN 15804 (Sustainability of Construction Works)
It applies to the construction industry and is often used to assess the environmental performance of materials such as asphalt, concrete, steel, and projects (rails, roads, bridges…).
EN 15804 standard is completed by the Product Category Rules (PCR), which constitute guidelines defining how Life Cycle Assessment should be conducted for a particular product or product group. This standardisation ensures comparable and credible results across similar products.
How can LCA help you comply with regulations?
These regulations are based on the norms stated above.
Construction Products Regulation (CPR)
This crucial legislation concerns standardised marketing requirements for construction products. As part of the EU Green Deal, the CPR has been updated and sets new requirements for material suppliers who want to enter the European market. These requirements concern displaying and reporting carbon emissions for infrastructure products (aggregates, concrete, and asphalt).
Everything You Need to Know About the Construction Products Regulation (CPR)
Circular Economy (CE) Principles
This set of guiding ideas focuses on creating a more sustainable economic system (a “closed-loop” system) by minimising waste, maximising resource efficiency, and promoting reducing, reusing, and recycling products and materials.
They are becoming more important in LCA for infrastructure as national or international regulations may encourage or mandate their inclusion.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Many infrastructure schemes are increasingly aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since LCA can assess how a project impacts or contributes to these goals, such as reducing environmental harm and improving social equity.
Regulations where LCA can be an asset
Although some regulations don’t specifically address or mention LCA, it turns out that Life Cycle Assessment represents an opportunity to the companies who need to be compliant.
EU Taxonomy regulation
The EU Taxonomy establishes a classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities, requiring companies to assess and disclose their environmental impact. It should enable the scale up of sustainable investment and the implementation of the European Green Deal.
This is where LCA can play a key role. For example, a road project aiming for EU Taxonomy compliance could use LCA to:
- Quantify embodied carbon of construction materials (cement, asphalt, steel)
- Evaluate circular economy principles (recycled aggregates, material reuse)
- Assess operational emissions (vehicle fuel consumption, road maintenance)
- Prove compliance with climate & pollution reduction criteria set by the Taxonomy
While the EU Taxonomy doesn’t rely on LCA, the LCA methodology will help you provide the environmental impacts of infrastructure materials and industrial activities.
EU Green Deal
The EU Green Deal is the European Union’s strategy to make the continent climate-neutral by 2050. It aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting circular economy principles, and protecting biodiversity across various fields such as transport and construction.
Seeing that Life Cycle Assessment can help industries quantify and reduce their carbon footprint, it constitutes a critical tool for measuring environmental impacts in line with the EU Green Deal objectives.
Why are these norms and regulations critical?
As you can see from above, many norms and regulations concerning LCA exist. This emphasises the scientific and systemic methodology that it represents.
These norms and regulations exist to:
- Ensure consistency and credibility in LCA
- Define product life cycle stages for comprehensive analysis
- Provide frameworks for identifying key environmental issues throughout a product’s life cycle
- Enable critical review processes for improved transparency and reliability
Over the years, the linear infrastructure industry has evolved to tackle the impacts of climate change and implement more sustainability. With LCA, stakeholders have a proven and powerful methodology to assess and reduce environmental impacts.
Check out how exactly LCA can guide you toward this transformative change with use cases in this article: What Is The Role of LCA in Linear Infrastructure?
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