Advances in Life Cycle Assessment Methodologies for Emerging Technologies and Systems
Advances in Life Cycle Assessment Methodologies for Emerging Technologies and Systems
By
Dr. Shauhrat S. CHOPRA
Assistant Professor
School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong
Date & Time: September 14, 2022 at 04:00 pm
Venue: ATREE Auditorium
Abstract
The need to evaluate and improve the environmental and economic sustainability of emerging technologies has been widely recognized. While various frameworks have been proposed in the literature, including anticipatory LCA, prospective or ex-ante LCA, to guide emerging technologies, all of them stress the importance of assessing their respective life cycle environmental burden early in the R&D stages. Application of LCA to identify environmental hotspots has a great potential to guide process design decision-making towards sustainability. However, the main challenge is that such assessments are performed at some arbitrary point during the development of new technologies, which is especially problematic when the technology scape is rapidly changing. Instead of using a retrospective (traditional) LCA, this talk will discuss the dynamic LCA (dLCA) approach that emphasizes the iterative assessment of emerging technology and the associated technology development trajectories as they evolve. In addition, the talk will introduce the latest progress in Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) for environmental decision making.
About the speaker
Dr. Shauhrat S. Chopra is an Assistant Professor at the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, in 2015. His doctoral dissertation was focused on resilience of complex systems including economic systems, industrial symbiosis, and critical infrastructure systems at urban and national levels. Before joining the School of Energy and Environment, Shauhrat worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, on the U.S. EPA funded LCnano project focused on sustainable design of future transformative nano-enabled products. His data-driven research is focused on designing indicators for sustainability and resilience of the built environment in support of environmental decision-making.
Dr. Chopra’s research plans revolve around the development of multidisciplinary projects that will address pressing challenges for building a socially just and sustainable future—a future which is not only environmentally and economically feasible but also resilient.