Welcome to Life Cycle Talks! A series of talks presenting the research front to keep you up to date with the science and application of the life cycle perspective. Our next guest is Tomas Ekvall, Adjunct Professor at the division of Environmental Systems Analysis, at Chalmers University of Technology. He will talk about the confusion surrounding the concepts of attributional and consequential LCA and give us suggestions on what can be done to reduce it.

“Concepts are useful to the extent that they make communication easier. This can be used as starting point for discussing what attributional and consequential LCA should mean,” says Tomas Ekvall.

Presenter

Tomas Ekvall is an independent researcher and consultant with 35 years of experience from research on life cycle assessment (LCA), waste management, and energy systems analysis. He has a broad interest in methods for environmental and sustainability assessments with a comprehensive systems perspective but is best known for his expertise on allocation and energy modelling in life cycle inventory analysis, as well as for his contributions to the debate on attributional and consequential LCA. Professor Ekvall is among the top 1% most cited environmental scientists in the world.

More information

More about attributional and consequential LCA:

Project: Modelling electricity in environmental footprints

To the project

Project: Modeling of Recycling

To the project

Further publications:

Describing attributional and consequential LCA, and discussing their pros and cons:
Title: Attributional and consequential life cycle assessment
Authors: Ekvall T.

To the publication

In-depth discussion of the pros and cons of attributional and consequential LCA:
Title: Normative ethics and methodology for life cycle assessment
Authors: Ekvall T, Tillman A-M, Molander S.

To the publication