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After its debut in the European Commission‟s Integrated Product Policy (COM (2003)302) as the “best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products”, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become increasingly essential in support of community policies and business. Focus has been primarily on establishing agreed methods, both within Europe and internationally. The EC‟s European Platform on LCA has continued to address the equally essential issue of data availability, coherence, and quality assurance. This Roadmap document summarises the requirements of several key EC policy developments in the context of vital support needs from this Platform, presenting different options for further development. LCA has become an important approach to boost smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in the EU. As an example, in the context of the Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative “A Resource Efficient Europe”, the European Commission developed its recommendations in the Single Market for Green Products Communication for the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guides. These methodologies reflect a vital milestone in the aim to increase coherence and quality in the assessment of environmental performance of products and organisations, facilitating governments and business stakeholders in that sense. Other prominent applications include in support of the Waste Framework Directive, the Ecodesign Directive, EU Ecolabel and EU GPP, the Raw Materials Initiative, the Bio economy Strategy, as well as providing a more advanced basis for indicators and targets accounting for the burdens of EU imports and exports to help focus policies and research funding. Life Cycle Thinking is essential in modern decision making in business and policy. Commonly implemented through Life Cycle Assessment, it is increasingly necessary to quantify the benefits and burdens associated with products, both goods and services, that occur in their supply chains, during use, as well as at the end-of-their lives. This helps to avoid the shifting of burdens between different geographic regions and impacts. Within this framework, the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA), developed by the JRC, together with DG-Environment, represents the reference point for data and methods essential to implementing Life Cycle based approaches. The Platform promotes the availability of data and information, with a focus on coherence and quality assurance. Although methodology development is advancing fast, including the provision of authoritative requirements by the European Commission, the availability of coherent, quality-assured life cycle data and studies still represent a more major challenge to mainstream use of LCA and associated environmental footprint methods in business and in policy. To date, the European Platform has facilitated several notable developments: - The International Reference Life Cycle Data System Data Network (ILCD DN); to be launched in early 2014, aims at providing a globally usable infrastructure for consistent and quality assured life cycle data. - The European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD); comprises of Life Cycle emissions and resource consumption Inventory (LCI) data from front-running EU-level business associations and other sources for key materials, energy carriers, transport, and waste management, to be used as source for secondary data. - The International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook; is a series of technical guidance documents that provide practice-oriented guidance on LCA; providing a key input to the Environmental Footprint developments, as well as complementary support in relation to data and other application needs. - The Resource Directory (RD); provides a structured repository for several types of life cycle-based documents and studies, as well as a world-wide list of life cycle support software packages and databases from suppliers/developers, and service providers. - The Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) Forum; acts as reference point for scholars and practitioners to discuss and share experiences on methods, data, events, etc. This tool is expected to be revised and released as a structured online public forum in the near future, in order to facilitate topic-oriented information exchange. - The Advisory Groups with business stakeholders and software developers; aim at improving the usefulness of the European Platform in the EU and international context, towards the agreement on common strategies and harmonisation. Although a lot of work has been already done, there are still several bottlenecks preventing the Platform to effectively and efficiently meet the growing needs of policy makers and other stakeholders. Seeking for synergies among tools, improving transparency and consistency of data, and populating the ELCD and ILCD DN with new relevant data are just a few examples of further development necessities. This Roadmap provides an overview of what would be required to further improve and best position the European Platform on LCA in relation to a selection of key on-going EC policy support activities required to facilitate environmental sustainability. The Roadmap specifies a number of action proposals. These actions are differentiated in the Roadmap in terms of time frame (i.e. short-mid-term describing circa 3 years starting from 2014, while the longer-term perspective represents a vision for the future evolution). Based on the availability of resources, three scenarios have been delineated to undertake to various extents these actions. In short, the first scenario assumes minor changes to the current resource availability. This scenario would address only the most important needs, detected as transversal across the different EU projects and policies involved, including only the strictly necessary improvements. According to the second scenario, slightly increased investments will be needed. Given the current situation, this scenario seems to be the minimum-effort scenario to improve the Platform in a timely manner. This scenario entails, among others, the expansion of the data and information support tools needed to e.g. ensure the smooth implementation of the Environmental Footprint method; amongst other policy and business support needs of the community. With major additional investment into the Platform, very important goals could be achieved in a fast-track manner. Through this third scenario, the Platform could become the most important reference point for all the life cycle based activities in the EU, facilitating interactions among stakeholders, policy makers and practitioners, and creating synergies for data exchange between the European Commission, other EU institutions, member-states and other non-governmental organizations. ispartof: edition:1 edition: 1 nrpages: 67 status: published |
