CLIMATE ACCOUNTING
A Life Cycle Assessment is the most comprehensive tool available for understanding a product's environmental impact. Where a product carbon footprint measures only greenhouse gas emissions, a full LCA quantifies impact across 15 or more environmental categories — including climate change, water use, land use, eutrophication, acidification, toxicity, ozone depletion, and resource depletion — across the full lifecycle from raw material extraction through manufacturing, distribution, use, and end of life. ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 define the internationally recognized framework within which LCAs must be conducted — establishing the principles, requirements, and methodology that make LCA results credible, comparable, and defensible to buyers, regulators, and verifiers.
Semtrio conducts ISO 14040/44-compliant LCAs across construction materials, chemicals, textiles, industrial goods, automotive components, and packaging — producing studies that identify environmental hotspots, support eco-design decisions, and underpin Environmental Product Declarations and regulatory submissions.
Environmental Product Declarations — increasingly required by construction specifiers, infrastructure procurement teams, and green building certification schemes — are built entirely on LCA results. There is no EPD without a credible, ISO 14040/44-compliant LCA behind it. As EPD requirements extend from construction materials to textiles, packaging, and industrial goods, LCA is becoming the upstream capability that product market access depends on.
The EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and Green Claims Directive both require product environmental claims to be substantiated by recognized methodology — in most contexts, ISO 14040/44-compliant LCA. Organizations that make product environmental claims without LCA backing face regulatory risk under the Green Claims Directive, which prohibits unsubstantiated environmental marketing claims across EU markets.
A product optimized purely for carbon reduction may inadvertently increase water consumption, land use pressure, or toxic load. Organizations that base eco-design decisions on carbon data alone are working with an incomplete environmental picture — sometimes trading one impact category for another. A full LCA provides the multi-dimensional view that genuine environmental improvement and credible claims require.
The relationship between LCA, PCF, and EPD is sequential. A product carbon footprint under ISO 14067 is a single-indicator extraction from a life cycle inventory — it uses the same data collection and system boundary logic as a full LCA but reports only climate change impact. An Environmental Product Declaration is a verified, publicly registered declaration of a product's environmental performance — built entirely on the life cycle inventory and impact assessment outputs of an ISO 14040/44-compliant LCA. Organizations that invest in a rigorous full LCA gain not only the complete environmental picture, but also the upstream data needed to produce ISO 14067 PCFs and ISO 14025-aligned EPDs from the same study.
Semtrio designs LCA studies to serve multiple downstream purposes simultaneously. Where a client needs both an EPD and a PCF, we structure the life cycle inventory to produce both from a single data collection exercise — eliminating the duplication and inconsistency that arises when PCF and EPD are commissioned separately and built on different datasets.
OUR PROCESS
An ISO 14040/44-compliant life cycle assessment — from goal and scope to verified, multi-purpose output.
For manufacturers in CBAM-covered sectors, the life cycle inventory data collected for an LCA includes the same production-level emission inputs required for CBAM embedded carbon calculations — structuring both from the same data collection exercise eliminates duplication across two requirements that draw on identical source data.
Learn moreEU buyers requiring LCA-backed product environmental data frequently also require EcoVadis scores as a parallel supplier qualification signal — Semtrio manages both workstreams in coordination, reducing internal data collection burden and strengthening supplier positioning across all assessment dimensions simultaneously.
Learn moreThe quality of an LCA is directly determined by the quality of upstream supplier data — primary data on raw material extraction, material processing, and component manufacturing. Semtrio's supplier engagement programs establish the data collection processes that make high-quality, primary-data-driven LCAs achievable for complex manufactured products.
Learn moreLCA findings — particularly for material environmental impacts and eco-design initiatives — directly inform GRI 301 (Materials), GRI 302 (Energy), and GRI 303 (Water) disclosures. Organizations producing GRI-aligned sustainability reports can draw LCA findings directly into their disclosure without separate data collection.
Learn morePCR developer. Sector depth across construction, textiles, chemicals, and packaging. LCA that goes beyond the study.
The methodological authority Semtrio holds in product environmental assessment goes beyond practitioner experience. As a PCR developer on the International EPD System — having authored the Product Category Rules for Denim fabrics and serving as moderator for several other categories — Semtrio operates at the level where the rules governing LCA methodology within product categories are defined. PCRs specify the system boundary, impact categories, allocation methods, and data quality requirements that every LCA and EPD in a given category must follow. When Semtrio conducts an LCA, we apply that rule-making depth to every methodological decision the study requires.
The sectors we serve — construction materials, textiles, chemicals, aluminium, packaging, and glass — each have distinct LCA characteristics: different allocation challenges, different primary data availability, different background dataset requirements, and different downstream verification requirements for EPD program operators. Semtrio's sector-specific experience means we know where the data gaps typically occur, which allocation methods are most defensible for each sector's production systems, and how to structure the study to satisfy both the immediate LCA requirement and the downstream EPD or PCF that follows.
Our LCA delivery is designed to serve multiple purposes from a single engagement. Where a client needs an EPD, a PCF, or both alongside the LCA, Semtrio structures the life cycle inventory and documentation so that all downstream outputs are produced from the same study — without requiring a separate data collection process for each deliverable.
Talk to our team about your life cycle assessmentWhether you're scoping a single service engagement, evaluating end-to-end advisory across multiple clusters, or looking for one accountable partner across strategy and disclosure — start here.
Yaren Ünal
Senior Specialist,Client Solutions
Hamza Söylemez
Specialist,Client Solutions
Frequently asked questions about life cycle assessment
A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic method for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service across its full lifecycle — from raw material extraction through manufacturing, distribution, use, and end of life. Unlike a product carbon footprint, which measures only greenhouse gas emissions, a full LCA assesses impact across 15 or more environmental categories — including climate change, eutrophication, acidification, water use, land use, ozone depletion, toxicity, and resource depletion. ISO 14040 establishes the principles and framework for conducting LCAs, and ISO 14044 defines the detailed requirements and guidelines for each phase of the study. Together, they form the internationally recognized methodological reference that makes LCA results credible, comparable across products, and accepted by EPD program operators, regulatory bodies, and procurement frameworks.
A life cycle assessment is the foundational environmental study that quantifies all environmental impacts across a product's lifecycle. A product carbon footprint (PCF) under ISO 14067 is a single-indicator extraction from the LCA life cycle inventory — it uses the same data collection and system boundary approach as a full LCA but reports only the climate change impact category. An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardized, third-party verified public document that communicates a product's environmental performance — built entirely on the results of an ISO 14040/44-compliant LCA. The sequence is: LCA provides the underlying environmental study; PCF extracts the carbon dimension from it; EPD publishes the verified results in a standardized format. Organizations that invest in a rigorous full LCA gain the upstream asset from which both PCF and EPD can be derived without separate data collection.
LCA is required or strongly incentivized in several commercial and regulatory contexts. Environmental Product Declarations — increasingly required by construction specifiers, infrastructure procurement, and green building certification schemes such as BREEAM and LEED — are built on ISO 14040/44-compliant LCAs. The EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) requires product environmental performance data for an expanding list of product categories. The EU Green Claims Directive prohibits unsubstantiated environmental marketing claims — requiring LCA-backed evidence for any product environmental claim made in EU markets. EU Green Public Procurement criteria increasingly reference LCA methodology for product environmental requirements. And internally, organizations use LCAs for eco-design decision-making — identifying which materials, processes, or lifecycle stages contribute most to environmental impact and where redesign effort should be directed.
ISO 14040 defines four phases. The goal and scope definition phase establishes the purpose of the study, the system boundary, the functional unit, the impact categories, and the data quality requirements. The life cycle inventory (LCI) phase collects and compiles all relevant inputs and outputs across the system boundary — energy, materials, water, emissions, and waste flows for every process within the lifecycle. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase characterizes the inventory flows against environmental impact categories — converting material and energy flows into quantified environmental impacts across categories such as climate change, eutrophication, and water scarcity. The interpretation phase evaluates the results, identifies environmental hotspots, conducts sensitivity analysis, and draws conclusions appropriate to the intended use of the study — whether eco-design improvement, EPD development, or regulatory compliance.
Semtrio's LCA engagements follow the four-phase ISO 14040/44 structure. We begin with goal and scope definition — establishing the system boundary, functional unit, and impact categories in alignment with the intended downstream use of the study, including any applicable Product Category Rules for EPD development. We then conduct the life cycle inventory phase — designing and executing data collection for all lifecycle stages, selecting appropriate background life cycle database data, and quality-reviewing all inputs. We conduct the impact assessment across all relevant categories, identify environmental hotspots, and produce the interpretation. We deliver the final ISO 14040/44-compliant LCA report and, where the study is intended to support EPD development, PCF reporting, or ESPR compliance, we prepare the additional documentation each downstream output requires — structured to avoid re-collecting data for each purpose.
Talk to our team about your life cycle assessmentOur team works directly with manufacturers commissioning LCAs for EPD development, ESPR compliance, and eco-design decisions — book a session and we will define the right scope, confirm the data requirements, and structure the study to serve every output you need from it.
Our team works directly with manufacturers commissioning LCAs for EPD development, ESPR compliance, and eco-design decisions — book a session and we will define the right scope, confirm the data requirements, and structure the study to serve every output you need from it.
