The jungle of norms and standards in life cycle assessment

In recent years, it has become increasingly important and has found its way into legal standards such as the EU Taxonomy, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). The preparation of a life cycle assessment is not trivial, so that many questions arise in practice:

• How exactly should a life cycle assessment be carried out?

• Are there sector-specific differences?

• What assistance do norms and standards offer? 

In particular, the evaluation of bio-based products raises the fundamental question of how biogenic carbon should be assessed. This is essential for assessing the carbon sequestration potential and substitution effects, so that environmentally relevant advantages of bio-based products over fossil-based products can be emphasised;

The following assistance is provided in TransBIB, which can support you on your way through the jungle of norms and standards: 

• Venn diagram

• Heatmap

• Decision tree

Within TransBIB, an overview of norms and standards of life cycle assessment, which are particularly relevant for the bioeconomy, is being developed. The overview is presented as a Venn diagram and graphically illustrates the areas in which they are applied. It thus shows which of the norms and standards are designed to ecologically assess bio-based and/or fossil-based products and services and/or whether there is guidance on sustainability management in companies. The Venn diagram also shows the regional scope of validity (international, EU, etc.) 

Furthermore, the norms and standards are compared with 10 comparison criteria. The results are presented in a heatmap, which ranks the norms and standards qualitatively. This shows at a glance how they perform with regard to the criteria.  

The standard with the best performance is determined and a decision tree is created. This shows the criteria for which other norms/standards represent equal alternatives or perform better in comparison.  

The provision of this assistance will follow shortly;