A framework for prospective/ex-ante life cycle assessment (LCA) and ecological risk assessment (ERA) of emerging technologies is developed and applied to a case study of III-V/silicon photovoltaic... Show moreA framework for prospective/ex-ante life cycle assessment (LCA) and ecological risk assessment (ERA) of emerging technologies is developed and applied to a case study of III-V/silicon photovoltaic panels. Show less
Cucurachi, S.; Blanco Rocha, C.F.; Steubing, B.R.P.; Heijungs, R. 2021
Life cycle assessment (LCA) models and databases have increased in size, resolution, and complexity, requiring analysts to rely on an ever-increasing number of uncertain model inputs. Such... Show moreLife cycle assessment (LCA) models and databases have increased in size, resolution, and complexity, requiring analysts to rely on an ever-increasing number of uncertain model inputs. Such increased complexity calls for systematic approaches to assessing the uncertainty of the output results of LCA models and the sensitivity of LCA model outputs to the model's uncertain inputs. In this contribution, we provide a theoretical basis and present a practical software implementation that combines uncertainty analysis and moment-independent global sensitivity analysis, which can be readily applied to full-scale LCA models. We implemented our approach in the Activity-Browser open source LCA software and it is made available for use in LCA studies. We demonstrate the approach and software implementation with a case study of crystalline silicon photovoltaics. Show less
