Site-Wide Activity

Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment (AESA) involves comparing the environmental burdens of individual activities to planetary boundaries and other environmental carrying capacities to understand what it takes for these activities to be environmentally sustainable. AESA has attracted great interest, but the lack of a harmonized and comprehensive guidance document has inhibited its practical application. Here, we present the beta version of the first practical guidance for how to apply AESA to activities at different scales. Based on existing academic studies, our guidance structure AESA in three main phases (environmental impact estimation, carrying capacities allocation and results interpretation), comprising nine steps and eleven sub-steps. The presentation of each (sub-)step is supported by three cross-cutting case studies covering a sample of residential buildings in Denmark, a major Indian cement company and the total consumption of the European Union. Our guidance builds on existing environmental accounting guidelines and standards, such as the International Life Cycle Data (ILCD) Handbook for product-level life cycle assessment and the company-level Greenhouse Gas Protocol and highlights where AESA requires a divergence from the existing practice. The guidance is not normative around the unique carrying capacity allocation step, and instead offers a broad overview of existing methods, choices and considerations. A key aim of this beta guidance is to collect feedback from the user community, after which a consolidated guidance document will be published in early 2026. Please follow this link to submit your feedback: https://www.survey-xact.dk/LinkCollector?key=Q8NNSDMMU695.

Apply now for this year's Life Cycle Summer School! This four-day program, taking place in Berlin from August 28 to 31, 2025, is designed to explore how life cycle management (LCM) tools can drive regional sustainability in a practical, policy‐oriented manner. The event brings together professionals, researchers, and regional managers to develop strategies that integrate sustainability into regional planning and decision-making. Apply now and join us at the end of August!

We are delighted to invite you to the 3rd Edition of our Sustainability Insights series,