Evaluation of Life-Cycle Assessment Studies of Chinese Cement Production: Challenges and Opportunities

The use of life-cycle assessment (LCA) to understand the embodied energy, environmental impacts, and potential energy-savings of manufactured products has become more widespread among researchers in recent years. This paper reviews recent LCA studies in the cement industry in China and in other countries and provides an assessment of the methodology used by the researchers compared to ISO LCA standards (ISO 14040:2006, ISO 14044:2006, and ISO/TR14048:2002). We evaluate whether the authors provide information on the intended application,targeted audience, functional unit, system boundary, data sources, data quality assessment, data disaggregation and other elements, and draw conclusions regarding the level of adherence to ISO standards for the papers reviewed. We found that China researchers have gained much experience during last decade, but still have room for improvement in establishing boundaries,assessing data quality, identifying data sources, and explaining limitations. The paper concludes with a discussion of directions for future LCA research in China.