VALUES focuses on developing new characterization factors to assess the lifecycle impacts of production systems on ecosystem services.
To establish this novel impact characterization approach in the life cycle assessment (LCA) domain, the project has several objectives:
Review the state-of the art on existing life cycle characterization methods for the assessment of land use impacts on ecosystem services in LCA, and then outline a roadmap to make potential improvements;
Develop an integrated model, based on the MIMES framework and adapted to LCA, for assessing and valuing ecosystem services;
Test its usability for the calculation of characterization factors to assess land use impacts on the provision of ecosystem services.
The production of bioenergy in Luxembourg serves as a case study to validate the proposed approach. The expected outputs of VALUES are:
Operational sets of characterization factors for the calculation of lifecycle impacts on ecosystems services;
A flexible modelling system re-usable in other methodological contexts and for other decision-making purposes.