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The course aims to introduce students to the principles of life cycle thinking (LCT) and methods for assessing the environmental impacts of products, processes, and organisations. The emphasis is on modern approaches to sustainability, ecodesign, carbon footprint analysis, and decarbonisation, which are based on current European directives, regulations, and strategies, including the European Green Deal and ESG reporting.
The course includes practical applications of the methods to specific industrial cases, such as the automotive, chemical, food and energy sectors. It addresses issues of critical raw materials, emissions, waste and toxicology. The course also covers the issues of eco-labelling, prevention of greenwashing and the use of environmental claims in marketing. Students will learn to work with ISO standards and European directives, such as CSRD, SFDR or REACH, and will gain a comprehensive overview of sustainability principles and their implementation in various industrial sectors.
Last update: Kočí Vladimír (04.12.2024)
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The condition for completing the course will be successfully completing a written test and an oral exam. Last update: Kočí Vladimír (04.12.2024)
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Obligatory:
Last update: prepocet_literatura.php (19.12.2024)
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Verification of study results will take the form of a written test and an oral exam. Last update: Kočí Vladimír (04.12.2024)
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1. Life Cycle Thinking - LCT. Relationships between human activity, industrial production, and the environment. Organizational and product scope of sustainability. Financial and non-financial reporting of organizations. ESG. Product ecology. Definition, purpose, and main environmental objectives of the EU Taxonomy. Technical screening criteria and their applications. ESG reporting and transparency, key metrics and KPIs, disclosure requirements. CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive). SFDR (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation). NFRD (Non-Financial Reporting Directive). Green Deal for Europe.
2. Organizational materiality analysis. Dual materiality analysis. Environmental assessment of products and technologies. The role of stakeholders in the modern perception of sustainability in practice and industry. Responsibility across the value chain of supplier-customer relationships. Organizational sustainability indicators. Breakdown of the scope of the organization's carbon footprint. Direct and indirect emissions. Scope 1, 2, and 3. Double counting issues. Data sources. Procedures for determining emission factors. ISO 14064 Organizational carbon footprint.
3. Product level sustainability – ecodesign. Regulation (EU) No. 2024/1781 on ecodesign. Analytical procedures and principles for ecodesign assessment. Product sustainability indicators. Definition and history of LCA. Importance of LCA in sustainable development. 4 phases of the LCA method. Analytical approaches to life cycle assessment. Top-down and bottom-up approaches in sustainability. Environmental indications, elemental flows, value flows, and relationship between raw material security and sustainability. Decarbonization at the product level. ISO 14040 and 14044 Life cycle assessment. ISO 14067 Product carbon footprint. Regulations (EU) No. 2024/1781 and No. 2009/125/EC on ecodesign.
4. Definition of objectives and scope. Product function. Functional and declared unit - definition and meaning. Reference flows. Examples of functional units and creation of alternative product design and technological solutions. Determination of the purpose of the study and its relationship to the definition of the boundaries of the "cradle-to-gate" vs. "cradle-to-grave" system.
5. Inventory analysis - LCI. Matrix for calculating the ecovector of the process. Ecovector of the system. Deterministic, stochastic and hybrid computational models. Elementary and value flows. Unit process. Software for LCA. Allocation of environmental burdens of parallel production, waste disposal, internal recycling external recycling. Allocation solution approaches: physical, economic, and system expansion.
6. Life cycle impact assessment - LCIA. Classification. Characterization. Impact category indicators. Emissions with parallel and serial effects. Characterization models. Midpoint and endpoint characterization. Normalization and weighting. Grouping and aggregation. Environmental impact assessment methodologies. CML, EDIP, Ecoindicator, IMPACT 2002+, ReCiPe, PEF.
7. Life cycle interpretation. Identification and formulation of significant findings. Contribution analysis. Significance analysis. Consistency analysis. Sensitivity analysis. Principles of validation of the results. Examples of case LCA studies. Examples of adverse impacts of waste management. Comparison of landfilling and energy recovery from the perspective of environmental impacts. Material recycling: opportunities and risks. Energy recovery from waste. LCA in the circular economy and the assessment of recycling processes.
8. Sustainable raw materials policy. Critical and strategic raw materials. Calculation of the determination of critical raw materials. Material and energy raw materials. Renewable and non-renewable raw materials. EU Directive No. 2008/98/EC on waste. Global warming and climate change. Environmental aspects of energy and fuels. Design of electrical appliances from the perspective of environmental impacts. Energy efficiency of buildings and appliances. Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU).
9. Stratospheric ozone depletion, ozone hole. Connections between the design of domestic cooling appliances and the environment. Possibilities for reducing the environmental impacts of cooling systems and air conditioning in modern buildings. Photochemical ozone formation. Summer smog. Impact of transport on environmental quality. Electromobility and its benefits and risks from the perspective of the entire life cycle.
10. Acidification, acidification of the environment. Fossil energy. Winter smog. Eutrophication and nutrient pollution. Environmental issues of washing powders and washing of textile products. Fertilizers and production of natural textile fibers.
11. Toxicology and ecotoxicology in LCA. Transfer factors. Transfer factors. Intake factors. Effect factors. Characterization of toxicity and ecotoxicity. Relationship between mid-point of human toxicity and end-point of human health. CTU toxic unit. Relationship between exposure and effect of poison. Toxic substances present in industrially produced products and materials, their role and risks. Flame retardants in furniture and electronics. Biocides in agricultural production and wood preservation. REACH Directive (Regulation No. 1907/2006). Stockholm Convention. Basel Convention.
12. Decarbonization and LCA applications in industry. Decarbonization analysis at the organizational level. Principles of decarbonization of industrial sectors. Carbon footprint quantification. Decarbonization efficiency analysis. Contribution analysis. ESG specifics in industrial sectors. Construction industry and architecture: construction chemistry, LCA of building materials. Building sustainability certification systems (LEED, BREAM, SBTool).
13. LCA case studies - successful and unsuccessful implementations of ESG strategies. Automotive industry: materials, batteries, fuels, powertrains. Chemical industry: plastics, solvents, agrochemicals, biochemicals and bio-based plastics. EU Directive No. 2019/904 on single-use plastic products. Food industry: life cycle analysis of agricultural products; food packaging and distribution, impacts of food waste. Energy: assessment of renewable energy sources, and energy by-products.
14. Ecolabeling of products. European Green Claims Directive 2024/825. Types of environmental claims. EPD. Possibilities of using eco-labels in marketing newly proposed products. Prevention of greenwashing. Types of greenwashing. GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board), TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures). Last update: Kočí Vladimír (04.12.2024)
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Graduates of the course will be able to apply various sustainability assessment procedures, design sustainable solutions and interpret environmental data for strategic decision-making in the context of sustainable development and the entire life cycle of products and organizations. Students will gain an overview of life cycle analysis (LCA) methods, from defining objectives and scope, through inventory analysis (LCI) and impact assessment (LCIA), to interpreting results. They will also learn to identify environmental risks in industrial processes and value chains, analyze the environmental burden of organizations and products and propose measures to reduce impacts. Last update: Kočí Vladimír (04.12.2024)
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