Course Overview

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the prevailing framework for evaluating the environmental consequences of products, services and energy systems. LCA allows for consistent comparisons of alternate system designs with respect to their environmental performance. This involves assessment of multiple environmental impact categories: for example climate change, acidification and toxic impacts. A life cycle perspective is central to ensure that our efforts to mitigate climate change do not cause other adverse environmental problems. Further, consistent choice of system boundaries is essential. LCA is designed to deal with such issues. This course provides a masters level introduction to life cycle assessment. The course is divided in two main sections: The first section provides the theoretical background to LCA and deals with the methodological essentials of LCA. This involves the mathematical structure of LCA, modeling of production systems and methods for environmental impact assessment. The second part presents applications of LCA to a variety of products and systems. The students will be guided to analyze a selection of these cases themselves through the provided problem sets.

Learning Achievement

1. Analyse an LCA study, understanding its strengths, weaknesses and appropriate use 2. Evaluate the environmental impact of a product, technology or system by applying the LCA methodology 3. Perform an LCA on a system using publicly available data and software

Competence

Course prerequisites

Grading Philosophy

Team Assessment (Group), Case Study (Individual), Project (Group), Final Examination

Course schedule

Course type

Lectures (14 hours)

Online Course Requirement

Instructor

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norhayati Abdullah

Other information

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