Reinout Heijungs

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Operations Analytics

Integrating Supply Chain Optimization (SCO) with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essential for creating supply chains that are both economically efficient and environmentally sustainable. While SCO focuses on optimizing network structures and decisions related to product and service delivery, LCA systematically assesses the environmental impacts acr...

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely applied methods for sustainability assessment. A main application of LCA is to compare alternative products to identify and promote those that are more environmentally friendly. Such comparative LCA studies often rest on, explicitly or implicitly, an idealized assumption, namely, 1:1 displacemen...

Understanding the detailed material composition of the various industrial and consumer products is essential for implementing efficient recycling practices and policies, conducting material flow analyses, and facilitating a transition toward a circular economy. However, existing data sources are limited in their product and material coverage. Curre...

Unequal outcomes resulting from urbanization can pose a significant challenge to sustainable development. Vehicles are an important urbanization dimension as a critical component of urban infrastructure by providing mobility and accessibility to social services. China’s vehicle ownership (referred to as in-use vehicle stocks) has been growing quick...

This chapter presents the basic elements of sensitivity analysis (SA), with an emphasis on their use in life cycle assessment. We discuss topics such as local and global SA, one-at-a-time and all-at-a-time SA, uncertainty apportioning, and the use of scenarios for addressing sensitivity.

This chapter discusses the notions of uncertainty and risk in relation to decision-making, with an emphasis on their implications for life cycle assessment. In particular, the chapter presents approaches for dealing with uncertain LCA results in decision situations.

This chapter describes how reserachers in the field of life cycle assessment have changed the originally and intentionally purely qualitative pedigree system into a fully quantitative system.

This chapter presents the basic elements of descriptive statistics, as far as needed for understanding uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of LCA. We discuss topics such as the estimation of parameters, confidence intervals and hypothesis tests.

This chapter presents guidance for handling uncertainty and sensitivity in studies that are not classical life cycle assessment studies as such, but that are extensions to the classical framework. This includes input-output-based LCA, parametrized LCA and life cycle sustainability assessment.

Probability theory is a core discipline in many fields of science and engineering, including LCA. Yet, its foundations and interpretation are the subject of continuous controversy. In this chapter, we will briefly address the Bayesian approach, fuzzy numbers, and some other alternatives.

This chapter uses the language of probability and statistics to develop a thoroughly stochastic LCA model.

This chapter presents the basic elements of descriptive statistics, as far as needed for understanding uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of LCA. We discuss topics such as the mean, the standard deviation, geometric statistics, correlation, and the visualization in terms of, e.g., boxplots and histograms.

This chapter explores the use of statistical techniques for addressing non-stochastic properties of life cycle assessment. It includes the use of regression analysis, machine learning and meta-analysis.

This chapter will critically analyze the role of the lognormal distribution for characterizing uncertainty in life cycle assessment. It presents the representation and properties, and discusses how authors in the LCA domain have developed unusual interpretations.

This chapter presents guidance for handling uncertainty and sensitivity in life cycle assessment studies.

This chapter presents a critical analysis of often-used approaches for dealing with uncertainty and sensitivity in life cycle assessment. It will discuss incorrect terminology (e.g., for “parameter” and “confidence interval”), undefined concepts (such as “uncertainty factors”) and the misunderstanding of concepts (like “significant differences” and...

This chapter deals with the topic of measurement errors, modeling errors, and other sources and types of error that contribute to uncertainty LCA. It also discusses approaches for error propagation, such as the Monte Carlo approach.

This chapter presents the basic elements of probability theory, as far as needed for understanding uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of LCA. We discuss topics such as the meaning of probability, probability distributions, moments, and some aspects of combining random variables.

Purpose When resources are extracted and used by society, they are not necessarily lost for future generations. Therefore, recent publications on impact assessment of abiotic resource use in life cycle assessment focus on a decreased accessibility of resources due to dissipation, rather than depletion. In a previous study, dissipation was defined a...

This chapter gives an overview of the mainstream method of life cycle assessment (LCA) on the basis of the generally accepted principles as laid down in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) series of standards on LCA. The first part is devoted to the key questions addressed by LCA and sketches the historical development toward t...

Land is an increasingly scarce resource that plays a critical role in achieving many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Land scarcity, namely the imbalance state between cropland availability and demand, can be mitigated by the trade of agricultural products, but how effective it is remains unclear. Here, by integrating grid-level data on cropla...

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Purpose The lognormal distribution is by far the most frequent distribution type to model uncertainty in LCA data. Its parameterization is non-trivial, and there are various options for this, some of which employ confusing names and symbols. The result is that by now many different systems have emerged, including ambiguous and incorrect forms. Met...

The ecological scarcity method (ESM) is a widely used system for assessing the environmental impact of pollutant emissions and resource extractions in the context of life cycle assessment (LCA). Its mathematical principles have been described in various reports, but not in scientific journals, which typically only quote the ESM or challenge the num...

The growing water scarcity due to international trade poses a serious threat to global sustainability. Given the intensified international trade throughout the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this paper tracks the virtual water trade and water footprint of BRI countries in 2005–2015. By conducting a multi-model assessment, we observe a substantial...

High-temperature heat pumps (HTHPs) are an emerging technology to improve overall process efficiency and reduce energy demand while enabling a switch from fossil fuels to renewable electricity. New industrial HTHP technologies aim to achieve an output heat temperature of 250 °C, suitable for decarbonising the food and beverages industry considering...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used for making science-based decisions. One part of that science is that many of the numbers that enter the calculation suffer from uncertainty, and that certain choices have to be made as well. As a result, the information that is used by the decision maker is subject to uncertainty. Uncertainty and sensitivity anal...

Why are both A −1 and (I − A) −1 used in life cycle assessment (LCA) matrix computations? This is a question that, in our experience of teaching LCA, students often wonder about and struggle with. A brief survey of the literature suggests that the question can also confuse experienced LCA practitioners. Here, we seek to unify the computational stru...

Introduction Many methodological papers report a comparison of methods for LCA, for instance comparing different impact assessment systems, or developing streamlined methods. A popular way to do so is by studying the differences of results for a number of products. We refer to such studies as quasi-empirical meta-comparisons. Review of existing ap...

Dairy farms are systems with multiple dependent variables whose practices influence their economic and environmental performances. Decisions made and actions taken to improve environmental performances of dairy farms carry the risk of decreasing farm profitability. Correlations among multiple variables must therefore be considered to reliably asses...

Biofuel systems may represent a promising strategy to combat climate change by replacing fossil fuels in electricity generation and transportation. First-generation biofuels from sugar and starch crops for ethanol (a gasoline substitute) and from oilseed crops for biodiesel (a petroleum diesel substitute) have come under increasing levels of scruti...

Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of carbon footprints (CFs) of grains production is important to formulate regional heterogeneous greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategies. This study evaluates the CFs, farm CFs (FCFs: CFs of per unit area), and production CFs (PCFs: CFs of per unit yield) of main grains production in China based on a new...

Over the past years, an increasing number of scholarly papers have used the planetary boundaries (PBs) within life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine if the life cycle impacts of a product system fit within those PBs and thereby establish the absolute sustainability of the product system. This type of LCA is nowadays coined as LCA‐based Absolute E...

Gennaria diphylla (Link) Parl. is a terrestrial, inconspicuous green orchid. Its distribution includes the central and western Mediterranean region as well as the Canary Islands and Madeira. Investigations on its pollination biology are scarce. In literature, there are mentions of autogamy and of allogamy. Pollination and pollen import and export w...

In economics, opportunity cost is defined as the benefit foregone by choosing another course of action. Considering opportunity costs enables the improved handling of trade-offs to better support strategic decision-making. We introduce the concept of opportunity cost into life cycle assessment (LCA). In our framework, opportunity cost extends the s...

Phalaenopsis is an important ornamental pot plant for the global horticultural market. The inflorescences of Phalaenopsis horticultural hybrids require support from a stick during plant cultivation because of the weight of multiple large flowers. Developing a horticultural hybrid with a sufficiently lignified inflorescence stem that does not requir...

For several decades structural modelling has assisted decision makers with the cognitive burden of exploring and interpreting complex situations. Three well-known techniques – labelled collectively here as semi-quantitative problem structuring and modelling (SPSM) – include ISM (Interpretive Structural Modelling); MICMAC (Matrice d’Impacts Croisés-...

Limited and uneven distributed water resources have become one of the main obstacles to China's sustainable development, and the “virtual water hypothesis” (VWH) is expected to help mitigate water stress. This study discusses the virtual water transfer pattern and water resources stress in China from the VWH perspective. Economic sectors in China a...

Buying reused products rather than new ones could reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). There are many aspects that can influence whether used products actually cause emissions to increase or decrease. This paper assesses the effects of secondhand markets on GHG emissions by using data on twelve product categories from Troostwijk Auction...

There is a general agreement in the LCA community that there are two types of LCAs: attributional and consequential. There have been numerous discussions about the pros and cons of the two approaches and on differences in methodology, in particular about methods that can be used in consequential LCA. There are, however, methodological aspects of at...

The meaning of the term ‘life cycle’ in relation to chemical, material and product in Safe-by-Design (SbD) studies is discussed. We recommend including explicit definitions and graphical representations of life cycles in future SbD work.

Finkbeiner (2021) comments on our critique (Heijungs et al., 2021) of the amendment to ISO 14044. We summarize hereafter his comment: • According to him, the ISO amendment does not rule out system expansion (in the sense of expanding the functional unit) in favor of substitution (in the sense of subtracting the avoided impacts of coproducts); inste...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) models and databases have increased in size, resolution, and complexity, requiring analysts to rely on an ever‐increasing number of uncertain model inputs. Such increased complexity calls for systematic approaches to assessing the uncertainty of the output results of LCA models and the sensitivity of LCA model outputs to...

Water consumption, energy use, and carbon emission are three related key anthropogenic impacts on the natural environment. China is the largest carbon emitter and energy consumer, with the serious unevenly distributed water resources. Therefore, investigating the water–energy–carbon (WEC) nexus is important for China's environmental footprint reduc...

This chapter gives an overview of the mainstream approaches and solutions to the problem of multifunctionality in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) phase. Many industrial processes are multifunctional. Their purpose generally comprises more than a single product or service. Practitioners in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are thus faced with the problem t...

To assess the potential environmental impact of human/industrial systems, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a very common method. There are two prominent types of LCA, namely attributional (ALCA) and consequential (CLCA). A lot of literature covers these approaches, but a general consensus on what they represent and an overview of all their difference...

In a recent contribution, Ref. [1] study the life cycle impacts of a noise-reducing technology for a combined heat and power plant [...]

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-021-01903-3

Necklace orchids (Coelogyninae, Epidendroideae) have been used in traditional medicine practices for centuries. Previous studies on a subset of unrelated orchid species utilized in these traditional practices revealed they possessed antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-oxidant activity, providing experimental proof for their medicinal propert...

Introduction Most LCA studies are comparative and to an increasing extent the effects uncertainty are included in LCA results. This raises the question how the best option from a set of product alternatives can be selected when the product scores are uncertain. The starting point of this article is a set of Monte Carlo results for a number of alter...

Systematic reviews, sometimes including meta-analyses, are often presented as an approach for identifying healthy and sustainable diets. Here we explore to which extent systematic review protocols have been adopted by studies comparing environmental impacts of foods based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results, and to which extent they comply with...

Purpose Weighting in life cycle assessment (LCA) incorporates stakeholder preferences in the decision-making process of comparative LCAs. Research efforts on this topic are concerned with deriving weights according to different principles, but few studies have evaluated the relationship between normalization and weights and their effect on single s...

A continuous growth of international trade, especially between developing countries, has greatly increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with energy consumption over the past two decades. Given the more intensified intraregional cooperation and trade within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this study aims to trace the imbalance of CO...

Purpose The methods for assessing the impact of using abiotic resources in life cycle assessment (LCA) have always been heavily debated. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of a common understanding of the problem related to resource use. This article reports the results of an effort to reach such common understanding between different sta...

PurposeIt is frequently mentioned in literature that LCA is linear, without a proof, or even without a clear definition of the criterion for linearity. Here we study the meaning of the term linear, and in relation to that, the question if LCA is indeed linear.Methods We explore the different meanings of the term linearity in the context of mathemat...

The current study makes use of life cycle assessment to evaluate the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) savings in coal electricity generation by 5% co-firing with sorghum pellets. The research models the utilization of 100 thousand hectares of under-utilized marginal land in Flores (Indonesia) for biomass sorghum cultivation. Based on equivalent energ...

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many of these advancements are scattered throughout the scientific literature, making it difficult for practitioners to apply the new models. Here, we present...

Industrial ecology tools are increasingly being used in ways that require high computational times. In the policy arena, this becomes problematic when practitioners want to live‐test various alternatives in a responsive and web‐based platform. In research, computational times come into play when analyzing large systems with multiple interventions o...

PurposeThis study aims to minimize the environmental impacts of thermal seawater desalination by optimizing the required fossil fuel mixture. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to simulate the environmental impacts for each fuel mixture. To prevent mixture designs inherited collinearly from correlating LCA results, fuel mixtures are first sampl...

A key source of uncertainty in the environmental assessment of emerging technologies is the unpredictable manufacturing, use, and end-of-life pathways a technology can take as it progresses from lab to industrial scale. This uncertainty has sometimes been addressed in life cycle assessment (LCA) by performing scenario analysis. However, the scenari...

Wildlife trade is a threat to species survival and wild collected orchids are a notable component of it. In the first systematic patent review of any wild species, we find many innovative and industrial uses of orchids, using the example of traditional product salep made with wild harvested Mediterranean and Central Asian terrestrial orchids. Despi...

Purpose In 1995, the original method for assessing the impact category abiotic resource depletion using abiotic depletion potentials (ADPs) was published. The ADP of a resource was defined as the ratio of the annual production and the square of the ultimate (crustal content based) reserve for the resource divided by the same ratio for a reference r...

Introduction The Monte Carlo technique is widely used and recommended for including uncertainties LCA. Typically, 1000 or 10,000 runs are done, but a clear argument for that number is not available, and with the growing size of LCA databases, an excessively high number of runs may be a time-consuming thing. We therefore investigate if a large numbe...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake which was missed during typesetting. The caption to Fig. 5 was incorrect. The correct version is given below.

Missing heritability is a common problem in psychiatry that impedes precision medicine approaches to autism and other heritable complex disorders. This proof-of-concept study uses a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between variants of the serotonin transporter promoter (5-HTTLPR) and autism to explore the hypothesis that some...

Purpose Improving the quality and quantity of unit process datasets in Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases affects every LCA they are used in. However, improvements in data quality and quantity are so far rather directed by the external supply of data and situation-driven requirements instead of systematic choices guided by structural dependencies...

Residential buildings and service sector buildings have an important contribution to climate change, directly via energy use in these buildings and indirectly through construction activities and the production and disposal of buildings materials. In this paper, we introduce a model that looks at total global building stock for 26 regions between 19...