Federal LCA Commons Data Curation

As global economies and societies grow, responsible management of resources and mitigation of pollution are necessities for maintaining the stability and health of the natural systems we all rely on. One approach for estimating the environmental benefits and burdens associated with human activities is the use of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). LCAs require quality data that are representative of the geographic, temporal, and technological conditions of the systems being modeled. These data can also be subject to several use and price barriers. While private sector LCA data is generally proprietary, the U.S. federal government produces a variety of publicly available models through research conducted across its agencies. Ensuring that these data are generated using centralized, standardized, and accessible approaches is crucial for their usefulness in decision-making and public disclosure.

The Federal Life Cycle Assessment Commons (FLCAC) is a community-of-practice that coordinates the distribution of LCA data generated by U.S. federal agencies or their laboratories. Industry can also submit data to the FLCAC via the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) U.S. Life Cycle Inventory (USLCI) database. The FLCAC plays a unique role when compared to other databases because it offers free and publicly accessible LCA data that is predominantly representative of U.S. or North American contexts. Guidance and tools to enable data sharing and interoperability previously existed for certain elements within the FLCAC, but centralized support across repositories was absent. The FLCAC data curator role was created to interface repositories, and to supply resources or procedures that advance the scale, harmonization, and compatibility of federal LCA data.

In 2022, ERG became the sole curator of the USLCI database. This work, paired with our expertise in the broader federal LCA data systems, earned us the privilege of becoming the first-ever cross-agency FLCAC data curator in 2024. ERG’s responsibilities now include, but are not limited to, data development, data submission and curation support, providing trainings to federal and non-federal audiences, data use and submission workflow innovation, and general maintenance of repositories. We coordinate across the federal government and industry to ensure that the most current, complete, consistent, and robust life cycle data are publicly available in digital format.