Performing LCA analysis on a firm level

Question

Dear colleagues, I have the following question concerning openLCA. Is there a possiblity to perform an LCA analysis on a firm level rather than on a product level?

For instance, suppose we have a firm that manufactures some products and buys components from its contragents. Performing  the corresponding LCA  as a regular "product" LCA we can get that some quantities can be double counted, when considering social LCA indicators, since the contragents normally deliver more than one type of parts.

Do you have a solution in oepnLCA for those types of questions?

Answer 1

Hello Tars,

performing an LCA on a company level is of course possible, you can follow then e.g. the method from the organisational LCA group; in a nutshell, and maybe too simplified, it is just an LCA for all products of an organistion, complicated is the definition of the functional unit which is then sometimes just: "everything the company makes in a year". See e.g. here for more information (don't be confused that the authors use "OLCA" for organisational LCA): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-015-0912-9 and http://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/o-lca_24.4.15-web.pdf.

For social LCA, there are many "intensive indicators" (https://www.greendelta.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/social-assessment-prosuite_task_3_4_2013.pdf), which do not depend on the system size and thus do not scale with the functional unit (unemployment rate in a region, e.g. - it will not be higher if you buy two products from there). You need to take this into account in your assessment.

Good luck! Andreas