Consequential Life Cycle Assessment of multi-modal mobility policies - the case of Luxembourg

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a universally recognized methodology aiming at quantifying the environmental impacts of a product or a process throughout its lifecycle. A specific LCA approach, called consequential LCA (C-LCA), is increasingly being developed and used to assess the environmental consequences of strategic policy actions affecting large scale systems and markets, from a decision-making support perspective.

In Luxembourg, policy actions related to electric mobility are of the highest importance and strategic for the fulfilment of CO2 reduction objectives. In order to cut its CO2 emissions by 20%, Luxembourg targets an introduction of 40,000 electric vehicles (EVs, corresponding to 10% of the vehicles’ fleet) by 2020. The specific situation of Luxembourg, which employs 150,000 daily cross-border commuters, raises additional issues related to the recharge and use of the electric vehicles. The multimodal dimension, with the personal use of electric vehicles combined with public transport, enlarges the scope of the analysis, both in terms of policy actions to be defined and evaluated and of simulation complexity.