GBlist: Hal's comment on LCA
Joel Todd (joeltodd@cpcug.org)
Wed, 05 Mar 1997 10:17:11 -0500
In his comments on Rob Watson's description of LEED, Hal raised some
important issues concerning the application of life-cycle assessment to
buildings. Life cycle concepts are very useful in thinking about the
"green-ness" of various alternatives--particularly in identifying the
trade-offs among those alternatives, since it is rare that one alternative
is "best" on all parameters. His discussion on the inevitability of values
entering into the assessment is absolutely correct. However, those of us
in the U.S. who are trying to develop better LCA methodology are not quite
as convinced as the Europeans that "normalization" is an objective and
feasible process, given data currently available and the importance of
local conditions on many measures. The scientists are still arguing over
the validity of some measures and we are exploring alternatives to the
"normalization" approach. The point is that these references are useful,
but LCA is still under development. We should use it and start to
incorporate its concepts into our thinking, but we should not overstate our
capabilities.
LCA It is one of many tools that help us to consider more thoroughly what
we mean by "sustainable" or "green." Even though the developers of the
methodology have invented an incredibly arcane jargon, it is really a
simple concept and one that I encourage everyone to use.
Hi Hal, good to be having this conversation with you again!
--Joel
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