The chemical industry, a significant contributor to industrial greenhouse gas emissions, must transition towards sustainability through adapting existing processes and developing novel technologies. To support this transition, an effective climate policy framework is indispensable. In this broader context, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can play a crucial role at multiple levels by verifying and quantifying targeted climate impact mitigation and identifying potential burden-shifting to other environmental impacts. This work advocates broadening the typical application scope of LCA in supporting the chemical industry’s transition by assessing environmental impacts and guiding decision-making on multiple levels. We identify three key challenges: 1) the need for comprehensive early-stage LCA of novel technologies, 2) the low accessibility of early- stage LCA in chemical process development, and 3) the challenge of designing effective climate policies to support sustainable development. To address these challenges, we present three main contributions: First, an exemplary early-stage LCA study of a novel electrochemical CO2 reduction process to carbon monoxide reveals promising environmental impacts compared to fossil-based processes. We highlight areas for process improvement to guide future development. Second, we introduce ESTIMATe, an early-stage LCA tool tailored to users without LCA experience, which facilitates rapid environmental assessment in chemical process development. Our case studies demonstrate ESTIMATe’s effective- ness in providing insights and guiding decision-making. Third, we apply LCA to guide climate policy design, using Border Carbon Adjustments (BCAs) as a current relevant example. Focusing on the most-produced polymer and organic chemical, respectively, we identify key policy design features to enhance the effectiveness of BCAs. Overall, our findings underscore the value of LCA beyond its typical application scope in informing decision-making across various levels of the chemical industry transition, enabling stakeholders to advance environmentally sustainable chemical production.
Hannah Wagner (Wed,) studied this question.