Controversy and consensus: common ground and best practices for life cycle assessment of emerging technologies

TL;DR

This paper reviews expert consensus and debates on best practices for conducting early-stage life cycle assessments of emerging technologies, emphasizing transparency, standardization, and stakeholder engagement to improve decision-making.

Contribution

It provides a structured synthesis of expert opinions, consensus points, and recommendations to advance early-stage LCA methodologies for emerging technologies.

Findings

Consensus on framing studies to decision context

Minimum reporting standards for data quality

Need for explicit transferability limits

Abstract

Public and private interest in life cycle assessment (LCA) has grown as environmental disclosure norms tighten, driving demand for decision-relevant assessment early in technological development cycles. Early-stage LCA has the potential to guide design choices, steer innovation, and mitigate lock-in of adverse environmental impacts. However, many aspects of early-stage LCA practice remain unsettled. We convened experts in a series of Faraday Discussion-style workshops to address recurring debates across six key topics for emerging technologies: appropriate use of LCA, uncertainty, comparison with incumbents, standardization, scale-up, and stakeholder engagement. For each issue, we present a declarative resolution, summarize key arguments for and against it, identify points of consensus, and provide recommendations. Across topics, the research network converged on practical priorities including framing studies to the decision context; setting minimum reporting expectations for data and study quality; and explicitly stating limits of transferability for scenario-based uncertainty assessment or analytically scaled-up projections. Disagreements persisted on when to formalize standards and how extensively uncertainty can/should be treated for low-maturity technologies. Supplementing the workshop findings with examples and context from relevant literature, we synthesize outcomes into a set of shared challenges and research priorities to strengthen transparent, evidence-based, and context-informed approaches for early-stage LCA.