The reliability of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results can be increased by an independent review or validation process.  We are supervising LCA projects as external reviewers. Thus we can support your LCA-projects and improve the reliability. Therefore we offer the following services:

Coaching for your case studies

You are elaborating your first LCA for your company or for one of your products? You are using SimaPro or ecoinvent data? We can offer you to support this work. Therefore we give a feedback to your goal and scope definition or review your life cylce inventory data. The interpretation of the data is validated. With a coaching of your first LCA studies by long-term LCA experts you will gain the necessary experience in a short time.

Internal Validation of LCI data

You would like to check your life cycle inventory analysis for completeness, consistency, and errors? Our experience allows an efficient validation of your data. We have validated several of the ecoinvent data in v1.0 and v2.0. Thus it was checked if these unit process raw data fullfil the quality guidelines of the ecoinvent centre.

Critical Review according to ISO 14040ff

You are elaborating a full LCA or you work together with a consultant? The international life cycle standards (ISO 14040ff) demands an external critical review for comparative studies which are published. The critical review process shall ensure that:

• the methods used to carry out the LCA are consistent with the international standard
• the methods used to carry out the LCA are scientifically and technically valid
• the data used are appropriate and reasonable in relation to the goal of the study
• the interpretations reflect the limitations identified and the goal of the study
• the study report is transparent and consistent

We can offer you a critical review according to the ISO 14040 standard. Therefore we will give feedback to the four main stages of an LCA: goal & scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation. For this we can collaborate with other LCA experts in a review panel. The procedure is documented in a final review statement.

Members of ESU-services Ltd. comprise the peer review of scientific papers on LCA related issues in the following scientific journals:

• Agricultural Systems
• AMBIO
• Biosystems Engineering
• Chemie Ingenieur Technik 
• Ecological Economics
• Ecological Indicators
• Environmental Impact Assessment Review (EIA)
• Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T)
• Fuel
• GCB Bioenergy
• International Dairy Journal
• International Journal of LCA
• Journal of Cleaner Production
• Journal of Industrial Ecology
• Solar Energy
• Waste Management
• Resources, Energy and Development (REaD)
• Energy: The International Journal

Among others we supported LCA studies on the following subjects as reviewers:

• life cycle inventory of bitumen
• LCA of polyethylene from bio-ethanol
• renewable fuels
• hand drying systems
• plastic packages
• treatment of organic wastes