On November 11 2014, the announced workshop on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) co organized by FAST in cooperation  with the EHA has taken place in Brussels, as prelude to the official program of the Fuel Cell Review Days.

The Paul Scherrer Institut of Switzerland explained the basic concepts underpinning LCA. The first aim of the workshop was to give the attendees a feeling of what the underlying concepts of Life Cycle Assessment are. At the example of a passenger car with an imprint “zero emissions”, the importance of a life cycle perspective was being discussed by the participants. Several figures then were used to point out how different types of passenger cars fuelled with various fuels can be compared in view of their environmental performance using LCA. It was shown that LCA allows to having a close analysis of which components or processes are causing which environmental impacts.

Within the second and main part of the workshop, the four basic steps of an LCA according to the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards were elaborated together with the workshop attendees. First LCA results from the project ALKAMMONIA served as case study. The necessity of good communication of the LCA results and their benefits were shown based on the case study and for further applications.