Life cycle sustainability assessment for sustainable energy future: A short review on opportunity and challenge

Abstract

Sustainable development is one of the important concerns for organizational growth. Sustainability is described as "the ability to continuously maintain a process over time." This concept includes the three kinds of dimensions in the aspects of society, economy, and environment. Life cycle sustainability assessment is a crucial tool for analyzing the sustainability of products, services, or processes, and it can help accelerate sustainable development. Life cycle sustainability assessment is the integrative analysis tool used to evaluate the impacts of society, economy, and environment of concerns in its life cycle. In this short review, we briefly introduce the methodology of life cycle sustainability assessment and review the application of life cycle sustainability assessment focusing on the sustainable energy future. For sustainable development, this framework may help to support the decision-making of products throughout the whole life cycle.