Driving the further development and widespread use of Life Cycle Assessment

This approach means that the displacement of pollution from one life stage to another (for example from use to material extraction) or from one type of impact to another (for example from climate change to acidification) is avoided. This is also the reason why ENGIE increasingly uses LCA as a prime decision- making tool within all ENGIE business lines. 

Lab Crigen is committed to assessing the environmental impacts of the technologies developed within ENGIE taking into account the latest methodological developments, while training and developing tools to make LCA accessible to all ENGIE actors.

CLAFooti, The User-Friendly LCA Tool For ENGIE Business Developers

Lab Crigen provides multiple services related to LCA to the group. Crigen’s Environment & Society Lab played a major role in the creation of the group’s Technology Position Paper on LCA, which was published in 2021. Another major contribution is CLAFooti, a simplified but powerful and accurate web tool that allows business units to compare the relative environmental performance of different scenarios for a technology, a product or a service. CLAFooti also reports how much each step in the life cycle contributes to each category of environmental impact.

Technologies Added, New Documentation Created

In 2022, two first LCA models were implemented in CLAFooti which deal with photovoltaic (PV) panels and district heating networks.

Documentation was created, including user guides per technology and a series of expert reports. At the end of 2023, the energy storage model was added encompassing Li-ion batteries (NMC and LFP technologies) and the vanadium redox flow battery. This model in CLAFooti will be presented to the stakeholders during a webinar in the second quarter of 2024. Models on biomethane and hydrogen production are available to be implemented in CLAFooti. 

Democratizing Life Cycle Assessment

Experts of the Environment & Society Lab also gave several training sessions and presentations on LCA in general and on the principles and use of CLAFooti. LCA specialist Raphaël Brière points out that this allows business developers to become more independent: “They no longer must call on us to evaluate the environmental impact of all their products and services. CLAFooti significantly contributes to the democratization of Life Cycle Assessment within ENGIE.”

Integrating The Concept Of Planetary Boundaries

Meanwhile, the lab is working together with international partners to integrate the concept of planetary boundaries into the LCA framework. Expert Julie Clavreul explains: “This would be a major step forward. At present, the LCA concept is limited to comparing products and services in terms of their environmental impact. The goal of integrating planetary boundaries is to be able to evaluate which products and services are environmentally sustainable when compared to the Earth's biophysical limits. In other words, the assessment evaluates whether the environmental performance is good enough to maintain the stability of the Earth system.”