ALIGNED Review Meeting

ALIGNED Project Holds Review Meeting and General Assembly

The ALIGNED project consortium met this morning for its Review Meeting and General Assembly. The team, focused on aligning life cycle assessment methods with bio-based sectors to improve environmental performance, presented their progress to the European Commission.

During the online review meeting, the project leaders had the opportunity to showcase their technical and scientific advancements to Blanca Saez Lacave, ALIGNED’s Project Officer from the European Research Executive Agency (REA) and Egidija Rainosalo, RDI Coordinator at Centria University of Applied Sciences and External Reviewer. The main achievements of the first reporting period (the initial 18 months) were thoroughly reviewed and the meeting was followed by a General Assembly.

ALIGNED-Web-Description-of-Scientific-Methods

ALIGNED Framework to Improve Sustainability of Bio-Based Products

With the release of ALIGNED’s description of scientific methods, the project offers an easily applicable scientific framework for LCA practitioners of any level. The ALIGNED project recently released its Description of Scientific Methods report, providing an accessible scientific framework for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies, specifically tailored to bio-based sectors. The report outlines a comprehensive set of approaches, methods, and tools based on the latest scientific insights. The report includes guidelines on how to apply each method or tool, enabling LCA practitioners of any level to use these results in their own LCAs.

The framework goes beyond the project itself and offers a valuable tool for industries to improve their environmental performance. The project’s open-source model provides free access to documents, tutorials, data, and guides.

The framework includes methods for:

  • Modeling the environmental impact of bio-based products in future scenarios
  • Accounting for limitations in biomass availability and emissions timing
  • Assessing the time-dependent impact on climate and biodiversity
  • Including social and economic factors in the assessment

All resources are freely available for download, click here.

ALIGNED-SETAC-2024

ALIGNED at SETAC Europe 34th Annual Meeting

Kíra Lancz (Aalborg University) represented the ALIGNED project at the SETAC Europe conference in Seville, Spain. She presented two posters in the session “Innovations in LCA: Bridging Temporal Dynamics and Advancements in Inventory Data Modeling.”

The first poster, “Carbon Flux Forest Model Extended to Multiple Species and Forest Management Practices: Data and Validation,” focused on the uses, validations and challenges. As part of the ALIGNED project improved the user experience and interoperability, expanded the forestry database and conducted a sensitivity analysis.

Amongst the conclusions of the second poster, “Assessing Methodological Choices in Wood-based Biorefinery LCA Literature,” the lack of harmonization in LCA practice for biorefineries, the need for systematic, harmonized methodological guidelines and practice not aligned with guidance. 

Both posters sparked engaging discussions about the ALIGNED project. Kíra also distributed project brochures for those interested in learning more.

You can download the posters here:

ALIGNED Poster 1

ALIGNED Poster 2