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Life Cycle Assessment Commons

About Us

The Federal LCA Commons is an interagency community of practice for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research methods. This community of practice collaborates to share expertise and methods to move toward common Federal data modeling conventions and make Federal data sets freely available through a web-based data repository.

The Federal LCA Commons has been formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish a formal agreement to coordinate LCA data, research, and information systems between the United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, the initiative is bolstered by a number of other participating agencies across government mission areas. Participating agencies each support for their mission, programs, and stakeholders. The initiative serves to coordinate and distribute Agency mission products for public benefit.

The goals of the Federal LCA Commons and its value to the public and the Federal government are to:

  1. Advance Federal LCA data, research, and information systems by leveraging multi-agency resources and expertise,
  2. Improve consistency in LCA methods developed by each agency to develop LCA results for decision-making and public disclosure, and
  3. Enhance public and agency access to Federal LCA data in a standardized searchable format from a common repository.

The Federal LCA Commons data platform uses the openLCA Collaboration Server application. The Federal LCA Commons allows users to access and download data in JSON-LD format, or fetch data directly into their local openLCA desktop application.