Set up your Lifecycle Analysis in minutes with Isometric’s LCA builder. This short tutorial will show you how to create your first LCA step-by-step.

The LCA builder provides an overview of all CO₂e fluxes related to a project and is used to create removals; the quantification of net removed CO₂e associated with a set of CDR activities, such as a batch of biochar stored. Start your LCA from a pre-built template containing expected CO₂e fluxes based on the protocol your project is being certified against, then edit the CO₂e fluxes so that the LCA is specific to your project’s activities.

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Overview

In Isometric Certify CO₂e fluxes are represented by components. Components are created from blueprints which specify how a CO₂e flux is calculated. For example, the emissions related to a truck journey can be represented with a component created from the blueprint Transport emissions which defines the CO₂e flux calculation as multiplying a distance, mass and emission factor.

In the LCA builder components are scoped to the phase that they occur in: project establishment, project operation and project end-of-life. This is reflective of how quantification frameworks are structured in Isometric protocols. The LCA builder combines CO₂e fluxes from all project phases, representative of a removal.

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Project operations

The LCA builder represents project operations as a template of the components reported every removal, for example how a facility’s electricity emissions will be quantified. The LCA builder specifies which components will be reported, but does not require the project to provide datapoints which are monitored. This allows projects to define and validate their LCA upfront, then report and verify materialized CO₂e fluxes for each removal, in this example by providing the quantity of electricity used by the facility and an emission factor.

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Project establishment & End-of-life

For a project’s establishment and end-of-life phases the LCA builder provides an interface to account for their associated emissions, for example the embodied emissions related to constructing a facility.

Read more about how project establishment and end-of-life emissions can be allocated over a project lifetime here.

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Customizing the LCA

After creating an LCA from a template, the components within the LCA should be customized for each project phase.

Refer to the Isometric protocol applicable to your project for information on what CO₂e fluxes are applicable (see the protocol’s system boundaries) and how they should be calculated and evidenced.

Then in the LCA builder:

1

Delete components that are not applicable to the project

For example, if the template contains a component for Biomass handling via loader and a loader is not used in the project, this component can be removed.

2

Add components that are applicable to the project but not already in the template

3

Validate that applicable components already in the LCA are calculated correctly

How components are calculated is defined by a blueprint. If the component has been created from the wrong blueprint delete the component and replace it with one created from the correct blueprint.

For example, imagine transportation by truck occurs in the project and is already present in the LCA. In the project the LCA is being built for, truck transportation emissions are calculated by measuring the volume of fuel consumed by the truck every journey.

However, in the LCA, the component representing that emission has been created from the blueprint Transport emissions which defines inputs as a distance, mass and emission factor. This component should be deleted from the LCA, and a correct component added that defines inputs for the volume of fuel and fuel emission factor, in this case Fuel usage by volume emissions.

4

Rename components to be specific to your project

For example, a default Transport emissions display name can be updated to Transport from pyrolysis facility to spreading site.

To learn more about how to identify and create the correct components, read Identifying Components.

It is always preferable for your project’s LCA to include components created from the most specific component blueprint available to accurately reflect your project’s operations and what data is being collected.

In the LCA builder component blueprints can be filtered by tags signaling the nature of the emission (direct emissions, electricity, embodied emissions, energy, fuel, transportation). This helps identify the applicable blueprints when adding a new component.

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Submitting data

Once an LCA is finalized it can be submitted for review by Isometric and used to create removals.

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Product walkthrough

A video walkthrough of the process of building an LCA template