From One-Time Life Cycle Assessment to Scalable Portfolio Reporting
Main Presenter: Amalia Diaz
Co-Authors: Constantin Herrmann Olga Vetter Kavya Madhu
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a central instrument for quantifying the environmental performance of products and the basis for creating product carbon footprints (PCF) and environmental product declarations (EPD). Communicating these results provides a competitive advantage and serves compliance. With the progressive implementation of digital product passports (DPP), the demand for fast, reliable, and repeatable life cycle calculations is further increasing. Companies are therefore seeking approaches that allow them to generate life cycle results for entire portfolios within their own organizations, without the need to repeatedly remodel complex product systems.
This contribution presents an innovative multi-level modeling approach to calculate LCA results that has been successfully used in several companies with large and diverse product portfolios. The case studies shown demonstrate how this approach meets external reporting requirements and significantly reduces modeling effort. The goal is to address how LCA calculation can be scaled from individual products to entire portfolios while maintaining robustness, transparency, and manageability over time.
First, the methodology of the approach is presented. This is based on a structured selection of representative materials and technologies that reflect the key characteristics and variations within a portfolio. Instead of modeling each product individually each time, the method establishes levels that capture both shared and differentiating elements across products. Once established, the model can be parameterized to generate product-specific results with limited additional input, generating consistent and good-quality results.
The second part of this presentation highlights case studies where companies have successfully integrated the models into their internal workflows to calculate life cycle indicators on demand. Results support marketing claims, customer communication, and sustainability reporting, while also enabling a systematic identification of environmental hotspots across portfolios. The novelty of this work lies in demonstrating how a single, intensive data collection and modeling phase can enable reliable and harmonized life cycle result calculation for a large number of products. By reducing the need for repeated remodeling, the approach supports the transition toward scalable, operational life cycle management in the context of emerging digital reporting requirements.
Keywords: Life cycle assessment (LCA), Reporting, environmental product declaration EPD, multi-level modeling, product carbon footprint PCF
