Jori Coustillas, SimaPro Product Owner at PRé Sustainability, is in Australia to speak at the 2019 ALCAS Conference. We thought we’d get his thoughts on LCA, both globally and in our region. Jori holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and Life Cycle Assessment from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts & Metiers in Paris. Before joining PRé he was a product environmental compliance manager and LCA expert for Schneider Electric, dealing with EPDs and LCAs and training practitioners. He joined PRé 3 years ago and is currently in charge of the development of the SimaPro family of software tools. What would you say are the most important global developments in LCA over the past 12 months?
We see a lot of effort with global harmonisation. The achievements of PEF show that it’s possible to do it at an even larger scale than what the building sectors had achieved so far with EPDs. Because it’s coming from Europe, which generally leads the way with environmental regulations, we’re convinced that it will make others follow the same route, either by adopting PEF rules (hopefully) or by pushing for their own standards. Do you have a sense of how the Australian market compares to other global markets for LCA. For example, what proportion of SimaPro global licences are for the Australian market?
We feel that a lot was done in the past in Australia to streamline LCA, especially in the building sector, but now it seems it’s not progressing as much as in other regions, incl other parts of Australasia such as Malaysia or Indonesia where laws are being passed that enforce LCA as an important tool for sustainability. What are the greatest challenges ahead for LCA practitioners globally?
To get out of their own field and show the relevance of LCA for topics like SDGs or Circular Economy. SimaPro is used by businesses around the world. How widely accepted is LCA in the business world and how do you predict this to change in the future?
The principles of LCA and LCT are widely accepted in businesses. In practise it is still hard to use at large scale, it’s in our hands, as LCA community, to change this and make life cycle information more easily available to a broader audience. With this in mind, PRé developed a cloud-based version of SimaPro that enables experts to share the knowledge captured in LCA models with different types of users in a more relevant way for them.