iLCA4SSbD

iLCA4SSbD aims to accelerate the industrial uptake of Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) in Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) by developing a user-friendly digital platform that supports integrated LCA (iLCA) and provides access to state-of-the-art life cycle sustainability assessment methods, tools and datasets. The iLCA will be established as a 3-tiered approach fully aligned with the European Commission's SSbD framework where each tier corresponding to an integrated methodology (supported by a toolbox) for safety, environmental, social and economic impact assessment at different stages of the innovation process, requiring a different level of data and expertise. Key actors from industry (incl. SMEs), regulation, policy, consultancy, academia and the civil society will be involved in co-creation of the iLCA approach to ensure integration of safety and sustainability trade-offs in SSbD decision making. To support data gap filling and cost-effective assessments, Artificial Intelligence will be employed, and toolboxes of simplified methods and tools will be developed, encompassing Environmental LCA, Social LCA, Life Cycle Costing, Cost-benefit Analysis, Portfolio Sustainability Assessment, Circularity Analysis, and Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment based on Planetary Boundaries. The iLCA platform and the methods and tools will be demonstrated through five case studies in the energy, biobased, chemicals, aeronautics and smart textiles sectors. The focus will be on critical raw materials and emerging alternatives to substances of concern. The generated LCA datasets will be made available in an Open & FAIR database and uploaded to the European Platform on LCA (EPLCA) in Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) format. This will generate new scientific evidence on the sustainability of chemicals, materials and products, which will be transferred as recommendations to public authorities to support them in the implementation of key EU policies and regulations.