Sustainability and Future Trajectories: How is Prospectivity Integrated into Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment?

Abstract

The energy transition and associated objectives like climate change mitigation, economic efficiency, social acceptance and security of supply require technologies that are sustainable. With the help of a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), such a holistic evaluation of energy technologies can be carried out. This in itself is very complex, since criteria of the different sustainability dimensions have to be compiled and integrated to give an overall result. However, LCSA often only considers the current development status of technologies and not their potential future developments. Particularly in the case of emerging technologies, possible future improvements or even negative impacts may occur in the course of technology development, which could significantly change the initial LCSA results. An early consideration of future developments of technologies in the context of so-called prospective LCSA is therefore highly relevant, but also of high complexity and associated with uncertainties. We evaluated how this complex topic of prospectivity has been dealt with in the LCSA community so far by conducting a literature review. Focusing on LCSA of energy technologies, we present our findings related to commonly used prospective methods and data, the underling motivation of their application as well as research gaps and potentials for further development.