Challenges and opportunities for web-shared publication of quality-assured life cycle data: the contributions of the Life Cycle Data Network

Purpose: The European Commission’s Integrated Product Policy Communication, 2003, defined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as the ‘best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products’. Since then, the use of LCA and life cycle approaches has been developing in a wide range of European policies, and its use has also significantly grown in business. Increasing the availability of quality-assured Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data is the current challenge to ensure the development of LCA in various areas. Methods: One solution to increase availability is to use LCI data from multiple database sources but under the condition that such LCI data are fully interoperable. Results and discussion: This paper presents original solutions and recent achievements towards increased availability, quality and interoperability of life cycle inventory data, developed through European Commission-led activities and based on wide stakeholder consultation and international dialogue. An overview of related activities, such as the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD), the European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD) and the ILCD Entry-Level quality requirements are presented. The focus is then on the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN). Conclusions: A non-centralised data network of LCI datasets complying with minimum quality requirements that was politically launched in February 2014, already includes several database nodes from different worldwide sources and has the potential to contribute to the needs of the international community.