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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product, material, or system throughout its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal. It considers all stages, including manufacturing, transportation, use, and sometimes even potential recycling or reuse. LCA takes into account various environmental indicators, such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water use, and resource depletion, to provide a holistic understanding of a product's sustainability performance.
LCA methodology is regulated by the standard ISO 14040, and the EU has developed other codes of practice to support it, such as the Environmental Footprint methods [109].
In the context of embodied carbon reporting, WLCA stands for "Whole Life Carbon Assessment". WLCA is an assessment methodology used to evaluate the total carbon emissions associated with a building or construction project over its entire life cycle, including both the operational and embodied carbon, also known as whole life carbon (WLC).
By considering both operational and embodied carbon, decision-makers can make more informed choices about design, materials, and construction methods to reduce the building's overall carbon impact. WLCA is especially valuable in sustainable construction practices as it ensures that efforts to mitigate carbon emissions go beyond just energy-efficient operation and extend to the full life cycle of the building, taking into account its embodied environmental impact as well.
However, there is still a lack of general understanding of WLCA within the industry, worsened by the lack of regulation and enforcement of WLCAs, which in turn does not solve the data challenge (the lack of widely available and accurate data that enables benchmarking) [110].
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Terms of Reference - Embodied Carbon