Outputs

Working Group 4's final report on accreditation of LCA practitioners and verifiers in the UK. This paper includes the group's recommendation to introduce certification, and the reasoning for this, and also discusses the potential options available for certification, and the next steps needed to work toward a UK certification scheme.

This report aims to introduce Life Cycle Assessment and to clarify the definition of Regulatory Science, then to provide examples of current use of Life Cycle Assessment in Regulatory Science, to consider cases in which the method offers opportunities in future Regulatory Science, and to suggest cases where the use of Life Cycle Assessment may not be offer benefits.

This report outlines three broad categories of training and education available in the UK for LCA skills: Higher Education, Short Courses, and Self-Directed Training. Following this, a series of recommendations for policy makers, industrial actors, and the wider LCA community are presented.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a vital tool for understanding the environmental impacts of products, services, and policy options across industry and the public sector. While its use is expanding, driven in part by regulatory requirements, the UK faces a fragmented LCA education and training landscape.

Working Group 4 recommends that formalisation of accreditation for LCA practitioners would give industry and policy makers confidence in their abilities and a guarantee of ethical conduct. This need will become more urgent as the weight of legislation prompted by environmental policies requires an increasing number of active professionals both undertaking LCA’s and verifying them.

The purpose of this report is to consider international best practice that could give policymakers greater confidence in using LCA to inform and evaluate policy, in order to test the above hypotheses. Specifically, it is focussed on discovering current practices around certification of LCA and LCA practitioners for regulatory science.

This deliverable provides an initial comprehensive review and structured classification of existing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies. Given the extensive diversity of methodologies, this review systematically clarifies common standards, frameworks, and their sectoral relevance, focusing on recognised international standards such as ISO 14040/44, ISO 14067, and ISO 14025. This deliverable aims to support informed methodological choices, enhance the clarity of LCA practices, and identify critical methodological aspects essential for robust sustainability assessments across diverse sectors.

This output contains the mapping of relevant standards and guidelines in bio-based materials.

This report presents a glossary of key terms alongside four case studies that examine the challenges associated with applying LCA in biobased and emerging systems. The glossary clarifies terminology commonly used in biobased and circular contexts, while the case studies (biofuels, circular materials, construction, and novel biomaterials) illustrate methodological issues including the treatment and storage of biogenic carbon, the modelling of circularity, and approaches to allocation and avoided impacts.

If LCA is to be further embraced in policy making and (pre) regulatory developments to promote improved environmental outcomes, then there are several challenges that exist regarding LCA data and methodology. This summary outlines the key challenges, explains the stakes for the UK, and identifies 4 priority areas for research and action.