Templates
The Global CO2 Initiative created the Excel templates located below to help practitioners conduct life cycle assessments (LCAs) and techno-economic assessments (TEAs) in alignment with the Initiative’s guidelines. The templates focus primarily on early-stage technology assessment, leading to them being more useful for describing hotspots and order-of-magnitude estimates rather than generating exact results. While the templates contain all the necessary steps for performing LCA and TEA, they may require significant adaptation for any particular project. The resources throughout this site can help with that process.
Download the LCA and TEA template
Download customized LCA and TEA templates: Aggregates, Algae, Chemicals, Concrete, or Direct Air Capture. Note that the inventory data contained in these templates represent very high-level guesses and estimates only; users must input data specific to their processes. Please see “Life Cycle and Techno-Economic Assessment Templates for Emerging Carbon Management Technologies” for further explanation of these templates.
Download Excel Tools and Tips for Templates
The video below explains how to use the LCA template. A template and video for TEA can be found in the corresponding section of AssessCCUS.
Additionally, ESTIMATe is an open-source Excel tool for early-stage Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of CCU chemicals aimed at non-LCA experts. ESTIMATe automates LCA decisions and minimizes data collection efforts by using estimation methods to fill data gaps, with the minimum required input being a basic reaction equation. Users can update the input data as more accurate information becomes available during process development. The tool integrates ecoinvent for environmental impact data, which requires a license. Environmental impacts are calculated in a holistic set of impact categories and presented in plots, for which interpretation guidance is provided. The tool includes a user manual and a tutorial for importing ecoinvent data. ESTIMATe was developed by Hannah Minten, André Bardow, and collaborators from the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at RWTH Aachen University and TotalEnergies.
Another LCA template for carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies—created by researchers at the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary—is available on GitHub. This model is more complex and may be suited for studies of pathways with higher technology readiness levels. However, it primarily focuses on greenhouse gas emissions, whereas the model on this site can be quickly adapted to assess other environmental impacts as well.
The Clean Air Task Force developed this tool that can assist with LCA for a variety of direct air capture pathways.
Lastly, the CRANE tool was built by the Prime Coalition and various partners to support emissions reduction potential modeling for early-stage technologies. CRANE also focuses primarily on greenhouse gas emissions rather than other environmental impacts, and it may require the user to already have some information or assumptions about the emissions performance of the technology under consideration.
Videos
The videos below cover LCA modeling. Information or methodologies contained within may provide useful guidance to those looking to perform LCA.
- U.S. NETL LCA Training Videos with corresponding toolkit
- TEA and LCA Guidelines Launch Webinar
- MIT OpenCourseWare Lecture on Life Cycle Analysis
- Introduction to LCA
- Defining Functional Units for LCA & TEA
- Technology Benchmarking for Comparative LCA & TEA
- GREET Tutorial Videos
- openLCA Tutorial: Part 1 and Part 2 (written tutorial here)
- SimaPro Tutorial: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 (written tutorial here)
- GaBi Tutorial: Playlist 1 and Playlist 2 (written tutorial here)
- Gathering Data and Performing Assessments Using openLCA
- Quick LCA Process Description from thinkstep
- Brief Overview of LCA Process