Environmental assessment for upscaling: an LCA-based eco-design process for design teams

Abstract

The upscaling of technologies is a socio-technical phenomenon covering technological development and deployment in society to meet societal imperatives (e.g. sustainability). It is characterized by five archetypes, each encompassing specific design practices and models referring to a great variety of consequences on industrial systems. However, these upscaling archetypes are not addressed in current eco-design practices, and even less so in a unified way. This research paper, based on a literature review on LCA, upscaling, and eco-design, presents a new LCA-based design process, titled Environmental Assessment for Upscaling (EAU). This methodological contribution constitutes upscaling environmental assessment guidelines for design team stakeholders (e.g. technical expert, lifecycle expert, company manager). Its originality is to propose a structure favouring the emergence of an accurate consideration of the environmental aspects of the upscaling with an aggregated approach of the upscaling archetype modelling. The EAU process clarifies the main points of interest in the LCA practices related to upscaling assessment from various LCA communities. This methodology follows six necessary steps, and relies on original and interlinked categories of upscaling parameters, enabling design teams to consider the upscaling as a whole during the eco-design process. Four additional resources to guide design team stakeholder collaboration are presented in parallel, with a focus on lifecycle engineering. Finally, the operationalization of the EAU process is discussed considering the LCA standard as a vector of integration in companies. Reinforcing the EAU process’ use could help design teams manage sustainability consistently and support the necessary ecological shifts at the company level.