Contribution of Life Cycle Assessment for the objective of carbon neutrality: Bibliographic review

Abstract

The Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 (UNFCCC, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2015) set the objective of containing the rise in the average temperature of the planet well below 2°C, ideally at 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018), this requires achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. This objective has become a major issue and has led to the development of multiple scenarios, responding to specific questions from different sectors (ADEME, 2021; Ministère de la Transition Ecologique, 2020; négaWatt, 2021; RTE, 2021) and supporting various strategies at the international, national and even regional level. France, as a signatory of the Paris Agreement, has thus developed a trajectory, described in the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC) (Ministère de la Transition Ecologique, 2020) to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. However, this issue raises many methodological questions on quantification metrics. Furthermore, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a recognized method for the environmental assessment of products and services, taking into account the entire life cycle. Carbon neutrality strategies would benefit from being enriched by the LCA method, on two counts: in order to extend the carbon dimension to a broader, multi-criteria environmental dimension, and in order to take into account the entire life cycle rather than just emissions from the territory. Nevertheless, the question of the feasibility of translating carbon neutrality scenarios into LCA modeling arises. This article reviews the literature on this subject. Research has highlighted the growing interest in these two subjects for several years, while revealing an ill-defined semantic around carbon neutrality: the term is mainly used to contextualize decarbonization projects. Thus, no article dealing with the carbon neutrality of France assessed by an LCA study has been identified. A test case would make it possible to understand the feasibility of such an approach: the scenario of the SNBC (Ministère de la Transition Ecologique, 2020) seems to be a relevant support for such an exercise.