Orientation

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is how you find out the environmental impact of a product from raw material extraction to end of life. It sits behind Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), product carbon footprints, eco-design decisions and a growing share of procurement and regulatory requirements.

It is also easy to get wrong in ways that are hard to see. Two studies of the same product can differ by a factor of two because one chose a different functional unit, a different allocation rule or a different database. This course teaches you to see those choices and make them deliberately.

New here? Read why learn LCA first: it explains why LCA is unit costing for the environment, and the three things every LCA needs.

How the school is organised

LCA 101 · Foundations covers the method as defined by ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Read it in order. Each lesson ends with the decisions you now need to be able to make.

LCA 201 · The drivers explains why your company needs this data: EPDs, the EU Construction Products Regulation (CPR), CBAM and product carbon footprints.

LCA 202 · Data covers the two inputs you bring: your bill of materials and a database.

The Skills class teaches you to use, and then build, AI skills you install in Claude, Claude Cowork or ChatGPT, so an assistant drafts the analysis with every number traced to evidence, and you check it. No programming needed.

The Library holds the glossary, a map of the standards and a list of free data sources.

What you need

1. For LCA 101 to 202: nothing but time. Each class takes a few hours to read, longer if you do the exercises.

2. For the Skills class: an AI assistant you already use at work: Claude (including Cowork), or ChatGPT with custom GPTs. No code, no terminal.

3. The skills: every skill used in the course is a free download from the Skills class.

About the numbers in this course

The emission factors in the worked examples are hypothetical teaching data, chosen so the arithmetic is easy to follow. The method is real; the data are not. Never copy them into a real study. The characterisation factors (IPCC AR6 GWP100) are real published values.

What this course is not

It is not a substitute for the standards themselves, for training on a specific software tool, or for a critical review. It will make you much better at doing, commissioning and reading LCAs.