495 - Special Topics: Life Cycle Assessment: Business Applications
Core/Elective: Elective
Credits: 0.5
Quarter Taught: Spring
Synopsis:
Overview of the life-cycle analysis (LCA) framework for environmental assessment of technology systems, with a focus on modeling methods, data sources, and applications of LCA results in business decisions.
Course Objectives: By the end of the course, you should be able to
- Describe uses of life cycle assessment (LCA)
- Define and apply key LCA components including functional unit, system boundary, and goal
- Identify and evaluate data sources for LCA
- Build engineering models for use in LCA
- Understand how LCA can be used in business decision-making
- Implement course learnings to carry out an LCA of a technology in the course project
- Work collaboratively in a group setting to complete the course project
- Critique LCA studies in the literature