The last year has seen the emergence of cap and trade as a dominant strategy to combat rising emissions. Whatever the merits or demerits of the cap and trade it will need secure foundations to ensure its integrity, transparency and currency. For that, it needs the life cycle assessment industry, which puts an environmental cost on goods and services from creation to disposal to be well established, well understood and its methodologies universally accepted. After all, the price of carbon will be passed on, and life cycle analysis is probably the fairest mechanism for calculating who is responsible for what.
In many ways, life cycle assessment is the horse that pulls the carbon trading cart. It is not getting enough attention.
Life cycle assessment is not new. The science is well established and in certain countries and industries, a considerable inventory has been built. However, its application nationally and internationally can be very inconsistent and too many organisations simply don't know enough about it.
Life cycle assessment assesses the ecolgical impact of a product or service. It therefore looks at the impacts on the creation, use and final disposal of a product or termination of a service. It looks beyond emissions at other aspects like water use, contamination and disposal process. Carbon usage is an element in any life cycle assessment. The price of carbon will be passed on to all goods and services. At this point life cycle assessment will become prominent because its assesments of emissions impacts will be priced into goods and services.
However the life cycle assessment industry and the inventory that it creates might not be ready to take centre stage. The science remains known to a few. Conferences remain the domain of academics. Discrepencies exist betwen national inventories and in some countries, like Australia, which is proposing an emissions trading scheme next year, the inventory is far from complete.
It is better we believe to get life cycle assessment and a national and intenational inventory in place, understood and communicated before we rush emissions trading. That way, standards won't be decided by lawyers and the courts.
