The Project on the Development of National Life Cycle Assessment Database

TÜBİTAK's Marmara Research Center and Boğaziçi University carry out the Project on the Development of National Life Cycle Assessment Database on behalf of the Directorate General of Productivity of the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology.

To support sustainable consumption and production in Turkey, it is necessary to increase energy and resource efficiency in the manufacturing industry, especially in sectors with concentrated water, energy, and these components, and to reduce greenhouse gases and other flue emissions that cause climate change. In this context, the Life Cycle Assessment (YDD) method is used to assess the industry's current environmental performance, to express it with internationally recognized performance indicators, and to improve improvement strategies. However, there is a need for an up-to-date, systematically recorded database derived from accurate sources for the reliability and validity of the LCA analysis results. Such database should also reflect Turkey’s production conditions based on sectors and processes. An LCA Database needs to be created at the national scale to respond to this need. The project envisages the establishment of energy, domestic and industrial water supply processes constituting the core of the National LCA Database. The main reason is the use of technologies and energy carriers such as petroleum, natural gas, coal, lignite in the water/electricity generation directly or after their conversion in all the industry branches. At the same time, all environmental assessment analyses show that the majority of the environmental impacts resulting from industrial activities, in particular, climate change and carbon/water footprint, result from water and energy consumption and the availability of this energy. Therefore, water and energy processes at the core of the National LCA Database will be used both to assess the direct environmental impact and to add new manufacturing sectors' production processes to the database after their creation.

The following goals are targeted with the Project on Development of a National Life Cycle Assessment Database:

• Establishment of an effective administrative and managerial structure to lay the foundations of the National LCA Database,
• Determination of the main energy production and distribution processes that form the basis of the National LCA Database and all industrial processes, determination of the system limits for domestic and industrial water systems, the establishment of database framework and main energy/water processes,
• Establishment of an effective information processing infrastructure to support the National LCA Database,
• Assessment of the current data state, detection of deficiencies and gaps,
• Production of road maps and strategies for completion of missing data,
• Determination of the energy production and domestic/industrial water supply sub-sectors to be included in the database as well as the creation of a data provider criteria.
• Determination of the appropriate format to ensure that the national database functions congruously with the globally accepted LCA standards and the current LCA software.
• Development of a data management system for energy and water production and distribution, for the collection of industrial consumption data in a database format as well as for efficient data flow, data storage, and verification,
• Establishment and development of technical capacities of the organizations and persons involved in the creation of the LCA database in accordance with their roles,
• Establishment of a data sharing and communication platform to support the effective use and dissemination of the database.