What do you think about the importance and value-add of The ISO 14040 series standards, Life Cycle Assessment? In general and especially in petrochemical industry.
Mohamed Salaheldin
ISO series gives the principles and framework for conducting a LCA study. Without a common framework and principles, the studies across the globe cannot be weighed on the same scale and cannot convey a transparent message, which is understood and implemented by its audience (practitioners, policymakers, stakeholders etc.). I do not see it different for petrochemical industry.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analytical tool for the systematic evaluation of the environmental aspects of a product or service system through all stages of its life cycle.
Mohamed Salaheldin, from my experience ISO 14040 is very helpful and commonly applied across the German automotive industry to access the environmental impacts of the cars AND the fuels such as synthetic fuels (e-fuels).
LCA has been around for quite a while. It can be applied to any industry segment. I think the standardization is a step forward to have a common ground to evaluate what have been practiced in a diversified set of industries.
Yes and no. It is not so important but it is quite useful. As it is said by others, the standardization and development of new standards or benchmarks will be crucial.
LCA may be corrupted by choosing an inappropriate functional unit, incorrectly defining the boundaries of the study and failing to measure the impact of all the relevant factors. If something is not correctly evaluated the result is irrelevant, for example if freight cost is only assessed on the price of fuel and the atmospheric impact is assumed to be zero the value of whatever is being moved is given a false boost.
No, for that we can use other standardization norms. They play different roles, in my opinion (including practical and applying perspectives).
Thanks for all contributions
It seems having a lot of tradeoffs
So more contributions will be appreciated :)
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Cognitive Science
- Thinking