VTT – Sustainability assessment tools (environmental, social, economics)

VTT has a long background in sustainability and life cycle assessment (LCA) of forest based products, starting from harvesting until end-use and recycling, re-use or disposal of products. Areas of special knowhow and expertise include both mature and novel wood-based products (including both intermediate and end-products) and processing technologies. Researchers working in this area participate in international projects (FP6, FP7, Horizon 2020) and international method development such as ISO-standardization in the fields of LCA (ISO14040-14044), carbon footprint of products and organisations (ISO14067 ISO 14069), water footprint (ISO14046), eco-efficiency (ISO 14045) and social responsibility (ISO 26000).

Applied sustainability assessment methods and indicators (including environmental, economic and social aspects) are based on LCA or life cycle thinking and take into account the challenges for evaluating circular use of forest-based resources. For life cycle assessment, VTT has developed and maintains a specialized, commercially available SULCA software (https://www.simulationstore.com/sulca). For research use, VTT maintains its own forest industry specific LCI database EcoData, which has been built in 30 years of cooperation with forest industry and related value chain actors. Sustainability assessment and LCA are compatible and can be conducted jointly with techno-economic modelling and simulation, which includes cost accounting and risk assessments in process industrial context. VTT’s BALAS software package for process simulations is compatible with LCA software SULCA, enabling efficient and integrated assessment of biorefinery concepts, taking into account relevant environmental, economic and social aspects. In addition, other commercially available LCA softwares and databases are regularly applied in research and customer projects.