Customization in Inventory Datasets: Effects on Life Cycle Assessment Results

The present paper aims to analyze the influence on Life Cycle Assessment results of the inventory datasets selected, considering their recentness and their customization operated by practitioners, also including the modeling of certain parameter temporal evolution (e.g., electricity grid mix). The source of uncertainty still needs to be treated in detail and quantitatively analyzed, especially regarding the practitioners’ choices. These can significantly affect the final results, so evaluating their impacts and effects is needed. This paper would like to contribute to this sector, by investigating energy-using products. The product selected as the case study is a professional coffee machine, an energy-using product category, produced by an Italian manufacturing company in the Marche region. A Life Cycle Assessment analysis for one reference product is realized, based on ISO 14040/44 standards, using different inventory datasets, all suitable to model the product but characterized by different levels of customization. The quantification of the result range allows producing supporting guidelines for inventory data selection and arbitrary customization, but also correct results interpretation and external communication of product life cycle environmental profile. The comparison of different modeling scenarios shows that the customization of the electricity datasets determines a reduction of impact in the Climate Change indicator of about 31%, while the inclusion of the elec-tricity evolution over time determines a reduction of about 41% compared with the reference LCA results.