ABSTRACT

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is mainly focused on the environmental impacts although it can also include both social and economic impacts for a sustainability assessment. An important part of impact assessment methods is characterization methods, that is, the way environmental problems are modeled and measured. Life cycle sustainability assessment is a proposed approach that integrates the information developed by LCA, life cycle costing, and social life cycle assessment to include economic, environment, and social considerations in decision-making. The assessment analyses and benchmarks the environmental impacts of the technologies per unit of power produced. The impact assessment results allow the identification of the parts of the product system that contribute most to the impacts and the scoping and system boundaries may have to be refined. Water quality and water availability are the main considerations that need to be taken into account using impact assessment.