Feasibility and scope of life cycle approaches to sustainable consumption

International policy documents call for the application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in the development of sustainable patterns of consumption and production. We describe how LCA, in combination with input-output analysis and household consumption data can be used to determine the environmental impact of consumption patterns. We shortly review results from studies focussing on CO2 emissions as environmental indicator. This household environmental impact (HEI) assessment can be used to analyse differences among households according to socioeconomic variables, age, settlement characteristics, and lifestyles. The change of the total environmental impact over time can be attributed to underlying variables such as efficiency gains, changes in consumption levels, structural changes, and changes in the population. This provides an understanding of causal factors influencing the development of HEIs, which can be used in scenario modelling. In addition, we describe how HEI assessment can be used to inform policy implementation, both through ex-ante analysis of the possible effect of an intended measure and through the ex-post evaluation of implemented policy measures.