![]() ![]() ( 2013) reviewed a large number of LCIA methods in order to provide recommended practice for both midpoint and endpoint characterisation factors. The two approaches are complementary in that the midpoint characterisation has a stronger relation to the environmental flows and comes in general with lower parameter uncertainty, while the endpoint characterisation is easier to interpret in terms of relevance of the environmental flows (Hauschild and Huijbregts 2015). Characterisation factors at endpoint level typically reflect damage at one of three areas of protection which are human health, ecosystem quality and resource scarcity. Characterisation factors at the midpoint level are located somewhere along the cause-impact pathway, typically at the point after which the environmental mechanism is identical for each environmental flow assigned to that impact category (Goedkoop et al. There are two mainstream ways to derive characterisation factors, i.e. per kg of resource extracted or emission released). This is done by means of so-called characterisation factors, which indicate the environmental impact per unit of stressor (e.g. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) supports interpretation of LCA studies by translating emissions and resource extractions into a limited number of environmental impact scores (Hauschild and Huijbregts 2015). ReCiPe2016 provides a state-of-the-art method to convert life cycle inventories to a limited number of life cycle impact scores on midpoint and endpoint level. Life cycle impact assessment is a fast evolving field of research. Further improvements relate to a regionalisation of more impact categories, moving from local to global species extinction and adding more impact pathways. Although significant effort has been put into the update of ReCiPe, there is still major improvement potential in the way impact pathways are modelled. We also expanded the number of environmental interventions and added impacts of water use on human health, impacts of water use and climate change on freshwater ecosystems and impacts of water use and tropospheric ozone formation on terrestrial ecosystems as novel damage pathways. The update of ReCiPe provides characterisation factors that are representative for the global scale instead of the European scale, while maintaining the possibility for a number of impact categories to implement characterisation factors at a country and continental scale. We included 17 midpoint impact categories. Endpoint characterisation factors, directly related to the areas of protection, were derived from midpoint characterisation factors with a constant mid-to-endpoint factor per impact category. We implemented human health, ecosystem quality and resource scarcity as three areas of protection. This paper provides an overview of the key elements of the ReCiPe2016 method. ![]() To further progress LCIA method development, we updated the ReCiPe2008 method to its version of 2016. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) translates emissions and resource extractions into a limited number of environmental impact scores by means of so-called characterisation factors. ![]()
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