What was once right does not always have to stay right
Life cycle assessment results can have an expiry date
LCA results are always just snapshots. We should view them less as judgements and more as tasks.
Products and processes that used to have a poor life cycle assessment can be improved, for example by designing packaging that saves materials or by reducing the energy consumption of electrical appliances. The circulation of reusable products can increase. Manufacturing processes can be made lower-emission through improved exhaust air or wastewater treatment.
Green electricity?
But even with completely unchanged products, the life cycle assessment can change considerably if the environment changes, as is currently happening with the increasing expansion of renewable energies. Caution is advisable, however, when products or processes are made palatable today with the promise of climate-neutral energy generation in the future. Battery-powered vehicles need green electricity. The same applies to the production of green hydrogen and many other production processes. What sounds good at the product level must also be realisable at the level of the overall system.
Many factors influence the assessment of the life cycle assessment
The criteria for assessing the LCA can also change. Acidification or ozone layer depletion used to be key ecological issues. They are still important, but today climate change is in the foreground. In a world of renewable energy, however, other environmental impacts will come into focus. For example, water scarcity or land use could gain more attention.
Another factor that may lead to changes in assessment is the improvement of life cycle assessment methodology. It is conceivable that increasing understanding of biodiversity and ecosystems, combined with new and powerful IT systems, will make it possible to quantify biodiversity effects in a reasonably reliable way in the future.