Resource efficiency and scenarios

Resource efficiency – a red-hot topic area with which the Life Cycle Engineering Department has been intensively dealing in research projects and in ongoing methodological development ever since it was established. Contradictory definitions and the wide variety of methods used to calculate resource efficiency often make it difficult to quantify. The field of application and investigation includes derivable strategic targets such as a reduction of material demand, increases in yield and in material and energy efficiency, climate protection, and securement of supplies. To be implemented these strategies must be operationalized; quantification of resource efficiency plays a highly important role here. Specific resource efficiency potentials that take into account life cycle-based ecological and economic indicators thus represent a promising approach to significantly increasing resource efficiency in future.

Life Cycle Assessment is a well-established, standardized method that allows material and energy flows together with their environmental impact to be quantified, and delta analyses to be subsequently carried out for the assessment of efficiency. In view of the complexity of Life Cycle Assessment, this work is operatively supported by the GaBi computer program and database.