Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method that evaluates the environmental impacts of a system or a product across its life cycle stages. Through accounting for impacts related to material resources, building components, installation and construction methods and end-of-life alongside those that occur during the use phase, LCA plays a crucial role in evaluating pathways towards improved environmental outcomes.
The Sustainable Systems Research Group focuses on several branches and applications of LCA research, including uncertainty analysis in LCA, policy analysis, and decision strategies for infrastructure systems (e.g., energy systems, road networks, water distribution networks, among others). Our research efforts include:
- Evaluating the influence of technological changes on system-level material flows and GHG emissions over time
- Determining modelling factors that may affect GHG emissions predictions at the system-level
- Carrying out LCA analyses with different scopes such as embodied emissions, future operational energy use, and decommissioning
Please find a non-exhaustive list of relevant publications below:
Life cycle GHG assessment of a building restoration: Case study of heritage industrial building in Toronto, Canada
Year: 2021
Authors: Opher, Tamar, Mel Duhamel, I. Daniel Posen, Daman K. Panesar, Rashad Brugmann, Adrien Roy, Ryan Zizzo, Larissa Sequeira, Alireza Anvari, and Heather L. MacLean
Published in: Journal of Cleaner Production 279 (2021): 123819.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123819
Taxonomy of uncertainty in environmental life cycle assessment of infrastructure projects
Year: 2020
Authors: Saxe, Shoshanna, Gursans Guven, Lucas Pereira, Alessandro Arrigoni, Tamar Opher, Adrien Roy, Aldrick Arceo et al.
Published in: Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 8 (2020): 083003.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab85f8
Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from electricity in the province of Ontario at different temporal resolutions
Year: 2020
Authors: Lucas Pereira, I. Daniel Posen
Published in: Journal of Cleaner Production 270: 083003.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122514
Quantifying environmental impacts of primary aluminum ingot production and consumption: A trade-linked multilevel life cycle assessment
Year: 2020
Authors: Alexandre Milovanoff, I. Daniel Posen, Heather L. MacLean
Published in: Journal of Industrial Ecology 25 (2021): 67–78.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13051
Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of concrete containing supplementary cementitious materials: Cut-off vs. substitution
Year: 2020
Authors: Arrigoni, A., Panesar, D.K., Duhamel, M., Opher, T., Saxe, S., Posen, I.D., MacLean, H.L.
Published in: Journal of Cleaner Production 263: 121465.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121465
Rethinking environmental LCA life stages for transport infrastructure to facilitate holistic assessment
Year: 2020
Authors: Saxe, S., Kasraian, D.
Published in: Journal of Industrial Ecology 24 (2020): 1031–1046.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13010
Life cycle assessment of emerging technologies: Evaluation techniques at different stages of market and technical maturity
Year: 2019
Authors: Bergerson, Joule A., Adam Brandt, Joe Cresko, Michael Carbajales-Dale, Heather L. MacLean, H. Scott Matthews, Sean McCoy, Marcelle McManus, William R. Morrow III, I. Daniel Posen, Thomas Seager, Timothy Skone, Sylvia Sleep
Published in: Journal of Industrial Ecology 24, no.1 (2019): 11-25
Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.12954
