Globally, countries including Canada that are undergoing an energy transition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are well-served by environmental LCA. LCA is a key industrial ecology tool that provides a systematic method by which environmental burdens of products and processes can be quantified from materials extraction through waste disposal (cradle-to-grave). An ongoing challenge exists for LCA in decision support for sustainable energy: it is a temporally static tool that does not capture the spatial patterns of infrastructure. Present advances in LCA include how to capture spatial and temporal variations across fuel supply through end use. Little work has been completed to better understand novel geospatial LCAs of energy systems can more accurately characterize environmental impacts and improve the outcomes of decisions. ETAPA adapts and improves methods for energy systems by integrating enhanced data science and geospatial methods into LCA. In addition to this improvement, we have advanced global-scale life cycle assessment with several coarser-scale studies that quantify country-level life cycle impacts and carbon footprints, demonstrating variation that depends on the infrastructure in each country. ETAPA data are valuable across many fields, which further catalyzes collaborations across disciplines who benefit from their use.

All ETPA's published articles are available to view here. An asterisk (*) after an author's name denotes a postdoctoral scholar, graduate or undergraduate student. ‡ denotes shared first authorship.