As the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is successively expanded starting January 1, 2024, life cycle assessments and greenhouse gas balances will become even more important for companies of many different industries and the automotive industry especially.

 

On the 14th of March 2024 the TopGear LCA Workshop took place in Orbassno, Italy. Dedicated international experts from industry and research have given insights on key LCA-topics, followed by a Q&A session. This hybrid event has been followed by more than 70 participants. Already the approximatly 30 people present in person came from various experts knowledge domains (R&D, production, material science).

The appealing programm included 5 top international speakers:

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• DI Johann Bachler (Global R&D Coordinator/Research & Technology Development, AVL)

• Sophie Richet (Global Leader of LCA and Carbon Footprint, Stellantis)

• Dr.-Ing. Matthias Harsch (Managing Director, LCS Life Cycle Simulation GmbH)

• M.Sc. Gonsalves Grünert (Head of Sustainable Manufacturing, RWTH University)

• M.Sc. Élise Monnier (Eco-innovation, Sustainability & LCA /Research Engineer, CEA-Liten)

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The goal of the workshop was to spark off new ideas how to better integrate sustainability already in a very early design stage of new product and process development.

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Key topics were:

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• Importance of LCA in product development from an industry perspective

       Hanno Bachler (Global R&D Coordinator/Research & Technology Development, AVL)     

 

• Challenges and practices of Life Cycle Assessments in very early development stages

       Sophie Richet (Global Leader of LCA and Carbon Footprint, Stellantis)      

 

•  Use phase calculation in R&D projects for products not yet in operation

        Dr.-Ing. Matthias Harsch (Managing Director, LCS Life Cycle Simulation GmbH)      

        M.Sc. Gonsalves Grünert (Head of Sustainable Manufacturing, RWTH University)

 

• Current and future main research questions for the further development of LCA

       M.Sc. Élise Monnier (Eco-innovation, Sustainability & LCA /Research Engineer, CEA-Liten)

    

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Many thanks again to the CRF collegues to host the workshop and to the main organisers Eva Butano (CRF) and Marcel Egger (i2m).