Offered by: Sustainability of Biobased Materials (Maastricht University, AMIBM)
About the LCA Course (Spring 2023 edition)
The “Life Cycle Assessment: fundamentals and applications” is an online training offered by the Research group Sustainability of materials of the Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM), Maastricht University.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized method to quantify the environmental impacts of a product or a service over its life cycle and has been used extensively in different sectors as an important decision-making tool for researchers, engineers, scientists, managers, and policymakers. LCA plays a crucial role in a transition toward a more circular economy and sustainable development.
Why this course?
This course is open to everyone who wants to:
- Get a detailed understanding of how LCA works
- Familiarize yourself with LCA to be able to do more expert LCA courses
- Learn how LCA works in practice and how it is applied with real-life LCA examples (mostly focused on biobased applications)
Objectives of the course
The “Life Cycle Assessment: Fundamentals and Applications” aims to:
- Provide a clear explanation of the framework and principles of LCA (following the international ISO standards).
- Provide basic knowledge on how the participants can perform an LCA study.
- Show the potentials and applications of LCA in the transition toward sustainability and a biobased and circular economy.
- Stimulate criticism regarding sustainability claims and conducted LCA studies.
At the end of the course, you should be able to:
- recall the fundamentals of life cycle thinking
- describe and understand what and why LCA is an important tool for sustainability
- explain four standardized steps of an LCA study
- explain what a functional unit is and give an example for a product or system
- explain what defining system boundaries means
- classify different types of allocation systems in LCA studies
- summarize how environmental impacts are calculated in an LCA study
- interpret the results of an LCA study
- compare the results of different LCA studies for similar products or systems
- critically analyze a conducted LCA study
Course Outline
Please click HERE to download the course outline.
Please note: this course will be offered online.
Agenda 2023
- April 5th 14.00 – 16.00
- April 12th 14.00 – 16.00
- April 19st 14.00 – 16.00
- April 26th 14.00 – 16.00
Click here to learn more about the sessions.
Course Fee
| Participant category | Fee 2023 |
| Industry participant | 500 € |
| Non-profits, PhDs, Academics | 350 € |
| Students (limited spots) | 100 € |
Questions? Please send a message to c.bettkervasconcelos@maastrichtuniversity.nl