The Science of Sustainability: Life Cycle Valuation

1
THE SCIENCE OF SUSTAINABILITY
By Name
Course
Instructor
Institution
Location
Date

2
INTRODUCTION
Life cycle valuation is an approach that is applied in the assessment of the environmental aspects
of organization system and operations relating to the quantitative valuation of product, process,
or service on the general impact environmental (Burkhardt, Heath & Turchi 2011). It’s an
inclusive view of interactions between environment covering various activities, from service
provision to production of products to distribution of energy and processing of products.
The scheme of the research study for assessing life cycle comprises of the following phases:
 Defining the scope of the goal in the assessment.
 Study of the inventory
 Effects of the assessment of life cycle assessment
 Interpretation of the assessment (Klein & Rubin 2013).
Systems thinking notion is a technique that integrates on ground belief that the constituent parts
of a system behaving inversely when separated from the environmental system. Systems thinking
behaves in holistic manner (Asdrubali et al 2015). Systems thinking approach deals on the
understanding of a system through by observing the connections and interactions that exists
between essentials elements comprising of the overall system.
In my research case study of uses of solar verses the use of coal power generation plant on the
environment, life cycle assessment and thinking holistic review is essential and key technics that
aid in the valuation of environmental systems. Life cycle assessments approaches are used in
evaluation in various organization systems from production, services provision and processing
industries.

3
Life cycle assessment aid in the decision and choice making. It indicates and shows performance
of everyone in the overall chain of life cycle product taking checking the relevant effect and
impacts on the economy, environment and people.
A life cycle technic allows product designers, providers of service, agents of the government and
individuals to make choices for the longer term and with consideration of all environmental
systems (Zhai et 2016). It helps in the integrating and perspective of general management,
carrying product and process development in a more sustainable direction in every organization
system. It also helps in the strengthening of bonds between different people in both employment
sector and the society.
Goal and Scope Definition
This is the first step of the Assessment. The key aim of this Life Cycle is to compare the life
cycles of Solar and Coal power generation plant. The LCA is conducted by bearing in mind the
mid-point and end-point features for both frameworks. Thus, the total LCA considers all of the
life-cycle phases for both systems including extraction of raw-materials, productions’ key
element, transportation, installation of framework, and management of wastes. The LCA
functional unit is measured as 1 kWh of energy produced, which decides the reference flow
rates.
Inventory analysis
The creation and formation of inventory in the life-cycle is the second phase in LCA. Inventory
analysis is conducted to assess the quantities of environment-affecting materials that are
produced or consumed during the life cycle of an object. It includes identifying the processes
used in the life-cycle and quantitatively assessing them, then classifying all linked materials that

4
influence the environment. Afterwards, the data of the object are assessed as a whole. Though, it
is hard to assemble all the information on the processes that are related, the results might have
been made simple or even data could be missing. It is vital to comprehend the boundaries applied
accordingly. The data quality and the assumptions included in calculating during the
performance of LCA study should also be understood accordingly. The collection and
assembling of input resources such as raw materials, the dynamics and the emissions of output
per unit procedures and process are well reflected in the LCA inventory. The figure 1 below
shows and gives more information on the energy phases and flow of materials for both systems.
Fig 1: Flow of energy and materials for both systems (Nishimura et al 2010)
Solar technologies trail on similar phases in their lifecycle like raw-material extraction from
excavations using resources, movement and transport of raw materials to the industry for