Lenzen Manfred, Crawford Robert
ISA, School of Physics, A28, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Environ Sci Technol. 2009 Nov 1;43(21):8251-6. doi: 10.1021/es902090z.
Hybrid techniques for Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) provide a way of combining the accuracy of process analysis and the completeness of input-output analysis. A number of methods have been suggested to implement a hybrid LCA in practice, with the main challenge being the integration of specific process data with an overarching input-output system. In this work we present a new hybrid LCA method which works at the finest input-output level of detail: structural paths. This new Path Exchange method avoids double-counting and system disturbance just as previous hybrid LCA methods, but instead of a large LCA database it requires only a minimum of external information on those structural paths that are to be represented by process data.
