Several methods are used to assess the environmental impacts of goods and services beyond the impacts generated by their use, most notably Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). These assessments fuel the public debate about the desirability of some ”green goods” and influence environmental policies, by providing information to consumers (e.g. food labeling) or to help designing eco-efficient subsidies (e.g. bioenergies, electric vehicles). In this context, several important questions arise as to which method to use for which policy question and how to do it. In particular, current “hot topics” include the question of the definition of the system boundaries to account for feedbacks in the economic system, the inclusion of storage and de-storage of biogenic carbon in ecosystems during the production of biomass or the environmental impacts of changes in land use into account.

This workshop aims to gather researchers, industry experts, and policy makers from public, private, and civil society to expose their views and analysis on current issues and potential pitfalls of environmental assessmentss, and the questions raised by the extension of the boundaries of the systems.

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