Life Cycle Inventory (LCI): From Numbers to Results
Most EPD delays start long before the verifier opens your report. The bottleneck is Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) data that arrives late, arrives messy, or never arrives at all. Master the basics below and you will cut weeks off every credential project—whether you tackle it in-house or team up with a white-glove partner.
Where LCI Data Hides
Plant logs, utility bills, purchase orders, ERP exports, supplier EPDs, and industry databases all feed the LCI engine. Scattered ownership makes retrieval painful. Map each flow to its keeper on day one and you sidestep 60 percent of typical chase-down time (EU-JRC, 2024).
Primary vs Secondary: Pick Your Battles
Primary data pulls straight from your lines and invoices. It earns credibility points with specifiers but costs effort. Secondary sets plug gaps with vetted averages from sources like ecoinvent or USLCI. The rule of thumb: capture primary for the top 80 percent of mass or cost, then lean on secondary for trace ingredients (ISO 14044, 2020). You hit diminishing returns fast after that breakpoint.
The Quality Gate: Checks That Matter
Numbers lie when units drift, time frames clash, or a tired engineer copies last quarter’s totals. Three quick filters catch most slips:
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Unit sanity (never mix kilograms and pounds).
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Temporal alignment (same fiscal year for inputs and outputs).
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Cross-table mass balance (input minus output equals accumulation).
A mid-project audit beats a midnight scramble before submission (NRC, 2023).
Mass Balance: The Trapdoor in Your Spreadsheet
A perfect mass balance is the smoke test of any LCI. Miss a co-product or forget water evaporation and the totals refuse to close. That triggers allocation debates, rework, and fresh rounds of data chasing. Build a simple flow diagram first; visual gaps expose missing streams faster than formulas can (UNEP, 2022).
About the Author
Walker Ryan is a climate-tech entrepreneur focused on driving industrial decarbonization through better data. As the founder and CEO of Parq, he helps manufacturers generate high-quality, third-party–verified carbon disclosures at scale—accelerating a traditionally slow and expensive process. Before starting Parq, Walker led over $200 million in sustainability-focused investments as VP of Strategy & Growth at ReStream Solutions, following earlier experience in investment banking at Deutsche Bank. He brings a rare mix of capital markets expertise and hands-on sustainability knowledge to tackling the infrastructure of industrial emissions.