Global normalisation factors for

the Environmental Footprint and

Life Cycle Assessment

Serenella Sala, Eleonora Crenna,

Michela Secchi, Rana Pant

2017

EUR 28984 EN
This publication is a Technical report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science
and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking
process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither
the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that
might be made of this publication.

Contact information
Name: Serenella Sala
Address: Via E. Fermi, 2749, Ispra (VA), Italy
Email: [email protected]

JRC Science Hub

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc

JRC109878

EUR 28984 EN

PDF ISBN 978-92-79-77213-9 ISSN 1831-9424 doi:10.2760/88930

Print ISBN 978-92-79-77214-6 ISSN 1018-5593 doi:10.2760/775013

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017

© European Union, 2017

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How to cite this report: Sala S., Crenna E., Secchi M., Pant, R., Global normalisation factors for the
Environmental Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment, EUR (28984), Publications Office of the European
Union, Luxembourg, 2017, ISBN 978-92-79-77213-9, doi:10.2760/88930, JRC109878

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Acknowledgment

A part of the data gathering work to develop global normalisation factors has been funded
by the European Commission, DG Environment, in the context of the Administrative
Arrangement “Technical support for Environmental Footprinting, Material Efficiency and the
European Platform on LCA” (2013-11 07.0307/ENV/2013/SI2.668694/A1).

i
Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................... 1
Executive summary ............................................................................................... 2
1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 4
2 Source and modelling approach for calculating global normalisation factors .............. 5
3 Global normalisation factors ................................................................................ 9
4 Outlook .......................................................................................................... 11
References ......................................................................................................... 12
List of abbreviations and definitions ....................................................................... 15
List of tables ....................................................................................................... 16

ii
Abstract
This report quantitatively characterizes environmental impacts at global scale in relation
to the 16 impact categories of the Environmental Footprint (EF) and Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA), namely: climate change; ozone depletion; human toxicity, cancer; human toxicity,
non-cancer; freshwater ecotoxicity; particulate matter; ionising radiation; photochemical
ozone formation; acidification; eutrophication, terrestrial; eutrophication, marine;
eutrophication, freshwater; land use; water use; resource use, fossils and resource use,
minerals and metals.
The results are recommended to be used as normalisation factors (NFs) in the context of
the Environmental Footprint (EF) for assessing the relevance of the impacts associated to
a product or system.
In LCA, according to ISO 14044 (ISO 2006), normalisation (similar to weighting) is an
optional steps of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA).
The normalisation factors represent the total impact of a reference region for a certain
impact category (e.g. climate change, eutrophication, etc.) in a reference year. For the EF,
due to the international nature of supply chains, the use of global normalisation factors is
recommended.
Normalisation has a relevant role to play in the Environmental Footprint to support the
identification of the most relevant impact categories, life cycle stages, process and resource
consumptions or emissions to ensure that the focus is put on those aspects that matter
the most and for communication purposes.
The global normalisation factors reported here are built on a vast collection of data on
emissions and resources extracted at global scale in 2010. Key choices were made for
compiling the inventories, which were then characterised by using the EF midpoint LCIA
method. The results are reported for each impact category. Coverage, completeness and
robustness of the underpinning inventories are discussed.
With this, the report supports the generation of life cycle based indicators for monitoring
the environmental dimension of the sustainability of supply chains, including contributions
to global environmental impacts in relation to planetary boundaries. This in turn enables a
life cycle based assessment of the sustainability of the intensification of primary production
for a greening EU economy.

1
Executive summary
Companies that want to highlight the environmental performance of their organisation or
their products face currently numerous obstacles. They have to choose between several
assessment methods promoted by public and private initiatives, they are often forced to
pay multiple costs for generating environmental information, and they have to deal with
the potential mistrust of consumers who are confused by the proliferation of too many
communication tools with different information that makes products difficult to compare.
The Communication on ‘Building the Single Market for Green Products’ (COM (2013) 196
final) and the related Recommendation 2013/179/EU on use of common methods to
measure and communicate the environmental life-cycle performance of products and
organisations, aim to ensure that environmental information in the EU market is
comparable and reliable, and can be used confidently by consumers, business partners,
investors, other company stakeholders, and policy makers.
In this context, the step of prioritising and aggregating the results for the 16 environmental
impact categories evaluated in the life cycle based Environmental Footprint (EF) - covering
e.g. climate change, acid rain, human and eco-toxicity, particulate matter but also impacts
due to the use of water, land and resources – has a high relevance.
In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), according to ISO 14044 (ISO 2006), normalisation (similar
to weighting) is an optional step of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). Those steps allow
aggregating LCA results, giving different weight to the different environmental impacts.
Normalisation has a relevant role to play in the Environmental Footprint to support the
identification of the most relevant impact categories, life cycle stages, process and resource
consumptions or emissions to ensure that the focus is put on those aspects that matter
the most and for communication purposes.
This report quantitatively characterizes environmental impacts at global scale in relation
to the impact categories of the Environmental Footprint. The normalisation references
express the total impact of a reference region for a certain impact category (e.g. climate
change, eutrophication, etc.) in a reference year. For the EF, due to the international nature
of supply chains, the use of global normalisation factors is recommended.
The global normalisation factors (NFs) reported here are built on a vast collection of data
on emissions and resources extracted at global scale in 2010. Key choices were made for
compiling the inventories, which were then characterised by using the EF midpoint method.
The results are reported for each impact category. Coverage completeness and robustness
of the underpinning inventories, as well as impact assessment methods are discussed.
On the inventory side, it was observed a general scarce availability of information on
environmental emissions and resource extraction, which led to the adoption of
extrapolation strategies for better complementing the inventories. On the impact
assessment side, in the majority of the impact categories, only few elementary flows make
up a significant share of the overall impact, contributing for example 40% (e.g. CFC-11 for
ozone depletion) up to about 70% (e.g. PM 2.5 for particulate matter), likely due to the
structure of the underpinning inventories.
This report provides an up to date picture of global normalisation figures and represents
an improvement over existing studies in this area. However, we also can indicate areas for
further improvement aiming at overcoming the uncertainties identified both at the
inventory (e.g. difficulty in retrieving recent data) and characterization levels (e.g.
consistency between inventory and impact assessment regarding the regionalisation of
impacts). Any assessment based on the use of NFs should be discussed and interpreted
taking into account also the limitations discussed in this report.

2
Table 1. Global normalisation factors for emissions and resource extraction in 2010, based on EF 2017 method (Sala et al 2017). The
attributed score is from I-highest to III-lowest
Recommendation
Inventory
global NF global NF for Inventory level of
Impact category Model Unit coverage
for EF EF per person * robustness EF impact
completeness
assessment
Climate change IPCC (2013) kg CO2 eq 5.79E+13 8.40E+03 II I I

Ozone depletion WMO (1999) kg CFC-11 eq 1.61E+08 2.34E-02 III II I

Human toxicity, cancer USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUh 2.66E+05 3.85E-05 III III II/III
Human toxicity, non-
USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUh 3.27E+06 4.75E-04 III III II/III
cancer
disease
Particulate matter Fantke et al., 2016 4.95E+06 (a)
7.18E-04 I/II I/II I
incidences
Ionising radiation Frischknecht et al., 2000 kBq U-235 eq. 2.91E+13 4.22E+03 II III II
Photochemical ozone Van Zelm et al., 2008 as applied
kg NMVOC eq. 2.80E+11 4.06E+01 III I/II II
formation in ReCiPe (2008)
Acidification Posch et al., 2008 mol H+ eq 3.83E+11 5.55E+01 II I/II II

Eutrophication, terrestrial Posch et al., 2008 mol N eq 1.22E+12 1.77E+02 II I/II II

Eutrophication,
Struijs et al., 2009 kg P eq 5.06E+09 7.34E-01 II III II
freshwater
Eutrophication, marine Struijs et al., 2009 kg N eq 1.95E+11 2.83E+01 II II/III II

Land use Bos et al., 2016 (based on) pt 9.64E+15 (b)

1.40E+06 II II III

Ecotoxicity freshwater USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUe 8.15E+13 1.18E+04 III III II/III
AWARE 100 (based on; UNEP, m water eq of
3
Water use 7.91E+13 (b)
1.15E+04 I II III
2016) deprived water
ADP fossils (van Oers et al.,
Resource use, fossils MJ 4.50E+14 6.53E+04 I II III
2002)
Resource use, minerals ADP ultimate reserve (van Oers
kg Sb eq 4.39E+08 6.36E-02 I II III
and metals et al., 2002)

* World population used to calculate the NF per person: 6895889018 people. Source: UNDESA (2011)
(a) NF calculation takes into account the emission height, in both the inventory and the impact assessment
(b) The NF is built by means of regionalised CFs

3
1 Introduction
The assessment of the environmental performance of supply chains is needed to improve
sustainability of products and companies. In the context of the interpretation of the life
cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results, normalisation represents a powerful tool for better
understanding the relative environmental significance of impacts across categories.
According to ISO 14044 (ISO, 2006), normalization is an optional step of life cycle
assessment (LCA) studies, in which impacts of a specific supply chain are compared with
reference scores –the so-called “normalisation factors” (NFs)– describing the impacts
associated with a reference product or a given system, e.g. a region, a country or the
entire globe.
Nowadays, normalisation is widely practiced in LCA-based decision support and policy
analysis. In 2016, the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been discussing the role of
normalisation (Pizzol et al. 2016), recommending the use of global normalisation factors
since perceived as more relevant for decision-making by helping better understand the
meaning of LCIA results. In fact, normalisation can play an important role in providing
information on the magnitude of impacts, by comparing them with a reference state, thus
facilitating the communication to stakeholders as well as supporting decision making.
Over time, several normalisation factors have been proposed at different level, e.g.
Sleeswijk et al. (2008) for Europe and globally, Laurent et al. (2013) for the global scale,
Sala et al. (2015) for Europe, specifically EU27. Important key limitations have been
identified in the previous studies, especially related to high uncertainty due to data gaps
and the use of different possible sources or methodological approaches (as extensively
highlighted in Benini and Sala, 2016).
The present study aims at developing a set of normalisation factors, applicable to the LCA
context, as a reference situation of the impacts at the global scale for the year 2010, to be
applied with the Environmental Footprint (EF) 2017 LCIA method (Sala et al., 2017). They
are the result of an effort in building a normalisation inventory of emissions and resource
use, describing also strengths, limitations and possible uncertainties associated with the
final factors.

4
2 Source and modelling approach for calculating global
normalisation factors
Global normalisation factors are built on inventories covering both emissions into the
environmental compartments (i.e. air, water and soil), and resources extracted on global
scale in 2010. Different options exist as data source for the reference year 2010. Therefore,
a hierarchical procedure, as proposed by Sala et al. (2015) complementing the criteria of
Sleeswijk et al. (2008), was used to guide the data selection. Some key choices, such as
those related to data-gap filling strategies, were applied for populating the inventories
when data were missing for the reference year or the spatial scale needed. For example,
in the case of temporal data gaps, we prioritized sources, choosing data as follows: a) data
related to years which are different from the reference, preferably between 2008 and 2011,
coming from the primary source; b) data for 2010 from an alternative source; c) if no one
of the previous alternatives was possible, we selected data for a year that is different from
the reference one, coming from an alternative source.
In a few cases, e.g. toxicity-related categories, freshwater and marine eutrophication, land
use and resource use, it was not possible to strictly follow the procedure as above, thus
we had to operate case-specific data-gap filling procedures. In fact, the global NF for the
toxicity-related impact categories were calculated by upscaling the European NF from Sala
et al. (2015), based on the ratio of European/global NF from Cucurachi et al. (2014). To
estimate the global NF for freshwater and marine eutrophication, the total emissions of
phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) to soil and water were estimated from the publication of
Bouwman et al. (2013). According to the linear growth of global P and N amount underlined
by the study, supported by FAOSTAT (2016) data on the 12-year (i.e. 2002-2014) linear
trend of production and consumption of both fertilizers and manure, a linear extrapolation
strategy was applied for calculating the annual increase of phosphorus at global level
between the years 2000 and 2050. The figures related to 2010 were then punctually
estimated. Concerning land use impact category, the inventory was developed by Farago
et al. (2018), based on their own criteria and extrapolation strategies. Finally, a specific
extrapolation procedure was adopted for arsenic, chromium, phosphorus, potassium and
rare earths in order to build the inventory for the resource use related global NF. The
retrieved data were representative for the oxide compound of the element (e.g. arsenic
trioxide, chromite, potash) which is effectively mined, and not on the metal content itself
as generally provided by mine production data. Therefore, the amount of these elements
themselves was extrapolated by using the molecular weight of the oxide compound and
the atomic weight of the element.
After their classification into the ILCD compliant elementary flows, the final inventories
were characterized by using the characterization factors (CFs) from the EF 2017 midpoint
method (Sala et al 2017). Regarding the specificity of the emission compartment,
“unspecified” CFs were generally used (e.g. “emission into water, unspecified” instead of
“emission to freshwater”). For a few impact categories, it was possible to use country-
specific CFs (i.e. for land use and water use), or CFs detailed by the height of the emission
source (i.e. for particulate matter). This was possible benefitting from the high detail of
the underpinning inventory for these categories.
Table 2 reports the data sources, by impact category, used for compiling the global
inventories of the year 2010.

5
Table 2. List of available data covering the elementary flows and sources by impact
category included in the global inventory for the calculation of the global normalisation
factors.

Impact
Substance groups Data sources
category
Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide both
from direct emissions and those associated to
EDGAR v. 4.2
LULUCF (land use, land-use change and
(EC-JRC & PBL, 2013)
forestry); PCFs; HFCs; sulphur hexafluoride
Climate change
HCFC-22; CFC-11; Halon-1211 Fraser et al. (2014)

HCFC-141b;HCFC-142b; Halon-1001 Fraser et al. (2011)

HCFC-140 Fraser et al. (2015)

Ozone CFC-11 Fraser et al. (2014)

depletion HCFC-22;Halon-1211, Halon totals Fraser et al. (2013)
Halon-1001;HCFC-141b;HCFC-142b Fraser et al. (2011)
Air emissions:
Heavy metals
Organics non-NMVOC, dioxins, PAH, HCB, etc.

Releases in water:
Industrial releases of HMs + organics
Urban wastewater treatment plants (heavy
Human toxicity metals + organics)
(cancer and
non-cancer), Releases in soil: Cucurachi et al. (2014)
Ecotoxicity Industrial releases (heavy metals, POPs)
freshwater Sewage sludge (containing organics and
metals)
Manure
Pesticides: Active ingredients breakdown (i.e.
disaggregated into EU countries and major
types of crops) combined with dosage
statistics.

Particulate Nitrogen oxides; ammonia; sulfur dioxide; EDGAR v. 4.3.1.

matter carbon monoxide; PM10, PM2.5 (EC-JRC & PBL, 2016)

Emissions of radionuclides to air and water

from nuclear sources for electricity generation,
i.e. uranium mining and milling, nuclear power
plants, coal, natural gas and oil combustion, UNSCEAR (2017)
geothermal energy extraction
Ionising
radiation
Emissions of radionuclides to air and water
from nuclear spent-fuel reprocessing RADD (2016); UNSCEAR
(2016); WNA (2016a)

6
 Impact
Substance groups Data sources
category

Photochemical
NMVOC; nitrogen oxides; methane; carbon EDGAR v. 4.3.1
ozone
monoxide (EC-JRC & PBL, 2016)
formation

EDGAR v. 4.3.1
Acidification Nitrogen oxides; sulphur dioxide; ammonia
(EC-JRC & PBL, 2016

Eutrophication, EDGAR v. 4.3.1

Nitrogen oxides; ammonia
terrestrial (EC-JRC & PBL, 2016)

Eutrophication,
Phosphorous to soil and water, from agriculture Bouwman et al. (2013)
freshwater

EDGAR v. 4.3.1
Nitrogen oxides; ammonia
Eutrophication, (EC-JRC & PBL, 2016)
marine
Nitrogen to water, from agriculture Bouwman et al. (2013)

Farago et al. (2018)

“Land occupation” and “land transformation”:
based on data from FAO
Land use forest, cropland, grassland, settlements,
(2010; 2014), FAOSTAT
unspecified
(2016) and NASA (2016)

WaterGAP (Müller
Schmied et al. 2014;
Water use Gross water consumption
Flörke et al., 2013; Aus
der Beek et al., 2010)

WNA (2016b); IEA

Fossils
(2014)
Resource use
Metals and minerals USGS (2011 a, b)

A qualitative assessment of the completeness and robustness of datasets used for building
the inventories as well as the robustness of the impact assessment models underpinning
the characterization of global impacts was performed for each impact category, according
to the specific criteria showed in Table 3. The information behind this evaluation aims at
drawing attention to the potential sources of uncertainty underlying the calculation of the
normalisation factors. Therefore, the robustness of the NFs is summarized by an overall
score covering the inventory coverage completeness, the inventory robustness (based on
data quality, entailing the combination of different sources and the adoption of
extrapolation strategies) and the robustness of the impact assessment method (according
to the recommendation from the ILCD (EC-JRC, 2011) and according to Sala et al. (2017).

7
Table 3. Criteria for evaluating the robustness of the global normalisation factors.

Analysed features:
Score(a) and description
definition

Inventory coverage I high (60% to 100%)

completeness, i.e. the extent
to which the inventory data II medium (30% to 59%)
cover the list of flows available
in ILCD, for each impact
III low (0 to 29%)
category

high (data from published datasets from official data

sources, subjected to a quality assurance procedure
I
and limited use of extrapolation methods, i.e. <20 % of
Inventory robustness, i.e. the
the impact derived from extrapolation)
quality of data, assessed by
considering both the
medium (non-publicly available or peer reviewed
combination of different
II datasets and/or use of extrapolation methods for more
sources and the adoption of
than 20% but less than 80% of the impact)
extrapolation strategies
low (use of extrapolation methods for more than 80%
II
of the impact)

Level of recommendation of I the model is recommended and satisfactory

the impact assessment
method, according to the the model is recommended, but in need of some
II
classification of the ILCD improvements
recommended characterization
models (EC-JRC, 2011; Sala
the model is recommended, but to be applied with
et al., 2017) based on model III
caution
quality
(a)
adapted from Sala et al. (2015)

8
3 Global normalisation factors

The global normalization factors, by impact category, are summarized in Table 4. The
coverage completeness and robustness of the underpinning inventory as well as the
reference to the impact assessment model used and its robustness are reported.
Combining reported data from different data sources, as for the final inventories of several
categories (e.g. climate change, ionizing radiation, land use, etc.), may lead to
uncertainties, such as over- or under-estimation of the final factor. Furthermore, in certain
cases, as for climate change, ozone depletion and ionizing radiation, the NFs are likely to
be underestimated due to missing data for some important substances, like HFCs, HCFCs
and emissions from non-nuclear activities (e.g. phosphate and ceramics industry)
respectively. In fact, limited data on such substances are available in the scientific
literature, although their recognized environmental relevance. For instance, HCFCs from
developing countries in 2008 accounted for 74% and 73% of total ODP-weighted HCFC
consumption and production, respectively (UNEP, 2010).
Uncertainties in the calculation of the global NFs may derive also from the classification of
elementary flows, as well as the selection of characterization factors, namely we generally
used unspecified CFs due to lack of detailed information at the inventory level.
According to the contribution analysis we performed, namely the analysis of the extent to
which the inventoried substances contribute, as a percentage, to the global normalisation
factor for each selected category, in the majority of the impact categories only few
elementary flows make up a significant share of the overall impact. Additionally, for the
majority of the impact categories a single flow drives the impact, by contributing for
example 40% (e.g. CFC-11 for ozone depletion) up to about 70% (e.g. PM2.5 for particulate
matter) to the overall impact. The reasons underpinning this aspect are extensively
discussed in Sala et al. (2015) and are reasonable also for the global normalisation factors.
In particular, for climate change, ionizing radiation and toxicity-related impacts, the
rationale for building the inventories are generally based on the same set of rules and the
CFs adopted in the characterization step come from the same models. For the other
categories, the results of the contribution analysis at EU27 and global level are generally
similar, with high share of impacts deriving from the combustion of fossil fuels (e.g. carbon
dioxide, nitrogen oxides, PM2.5) just to name an example.

9
Table 4. Global normalisation factors for emissions and resource extraction in 2010, based on EF 2017 method (Sala et al 2017). The
attributed score is from I-highest to III-lowest
Recommendation
Inventory
global NF global NF for Inventory level of
Impact category Model Unit coverage
for EF EF per person * robustness EF impact
completeness
assessment
Climate change IPCC (2013) kg CO2 eq 5.79E+13 8.40E+03 II I I

Ozone depletion WMO (1999) kg CFC-11 eq 1.61E+08 2.34E-02 III II I

Human toxicity, cancer USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUh 2.66E+05 3.85E-05 III III II/III
Human toxicity, non-
USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUh 3.27E+06 4.75E-04 III III II/III
cancer
disease
Particulate matter Fantke et al., 2016 4.95E+06 (a)
7.18E-04 I/II I/II I
incidences
Ionising radiation Frischknecht et al., 2000 kBq U-235 eq. 2.91E+13 4.22E+03 II III II
Photochemical ozone Van Zelm et al., 2008 as applied
kg NMVOC eq. 2.80E+11 4.06E+01 III I/II II
formation in ReCiPe (2008)
Acidification Posch et al., 2008 mol H+ eq 3.83E+11 5.55E+01 II I/II II

Eutrophication, terrestrial Posch et al., 2008 mol N eq 1.22E+12 1.77E+02 II I/II II

Eutrophication,
Struijs et al., 2009 kg P eq 5.06E+09 7.34E-01 II III II
freshwater
Eutrophication, marine Struijs et al., 2009 kg N eq 1.95E+11 2.83E+01 II II/III II

Land use Bos et al., 2016 (based on) pt 9.64E+15 (b)

1.40E+06 II II III

Ecotoxicity freshwater USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) CTUe 8.15E+13 1.18E+04 III III II/III
AWARE 100 (based on; UNEP, m water eq of
3
Water use 7.91E+13 (b)
1.15E+04 I II III
2016) deprived water
ADP fossils (van Oers et al.,
Resource use, fossils MJ 4.50E+14 6.53E+04 I II III
2002)
Resource use, minerals ADP ultimate reserve (van Oers
kg Sb eq 4.39E+08 6.36E-02 I II III
and metals et al., 2002)

* World population used to calculate the NFs per person: 6895889018 people. Source: UNDESA (2011)
(a) NF calculation takes into account the emission height, in both the inventory and the impact assessment
(b) The NF is built by means of regionalised CFs

10
4 Outlook
In this study, a set of normalisation factors for the year 2010 has been estimated with the
aim of describing and quantitatively assessing the level of pressure to the environment at
the global scale. Global normalisation factors can be used in the decision-making context
for improving the interpretation of LCIA results, thus enhancing the achievement of
sustainability goals in the supply chain management. In fact, normalisation factors help
interpret the scores of each impact category, converting them in fraction of impact of a
reference situation’s system (e.g. the global system as presented in this study).
Calculations herein presented are based on inventory data of emissions and resource use
at global scale, mainly retrieved from official statistics. This report provides an up to date
picture of global normalisation figures and represents an improvement over existing work
in this area. However, we also can indicate areas for further improvement aiming at
overcoming the uncertainties identified both at the inventory (e.g. difficulty in retrieving
recent data) and characterization levels (e.g. consistency between inventory and impact
assessment regarding the regionalisation of impacts). Any assessment based on the use
of NFs should be discussed and interpreted taking into account also the limitations
discussed in this report. As previously indicated by Sala et al. (2015) and Benini and Sala
(2016) for the EU27 normalisation factors, areas for further improvement include: (i)
completeness of the inventory; (ii) methodological choices, and (iii) completeness and
robustness of the impact assessment.
Completeness of the inventories. More robust inventories for several impact categories
should be set, focusing on their coverage completeness in terms of elementary flows
available for each impact category. Generally, global inventories are affected by limited
availability of recent data on emissions and resource use from the original sources. An
option of overcoming this issue has been evaluated by building inventories based on data
proceeding from different reliable data sources. In fact, having a complete normalisation
inventory is fundamental in order to avoid over- or under-estimations of the overall
environmental impacts as well as generating misleading interpretation of the characterised
LCIA results. Currently, the level of harmonization among the underpinning approaches
used for obtaining data can still be improved. Therefore, a systematic collection of more
detailed and precise data associated to the global emission profile and resource use is
always needed, thus ensuring consistency of assumptions and extrapolations.
Methodological choices. As reported in Benini and Sala (2016), the classification of
elementary flows represents one of the most significant sources of uncertainty issues due
to several aspects. For instance, the use of different names in the sources for identifying
the same substance may generate inconsistencies in the final flow mapping and in the
identification of the corresponding CFs. Besides, the lack of CFs in the applied LCIA
methods for several substances which are instead available in the statistics prevents a
more comprehensive assessment of the impacts.
Impact assessment. Global normalisation factors have been calculated by using the EF
2017 method (Sala et al., 2017). For several impact categories, e.g. water use and land
use, regionalized characterization models for impact assessment have been adopted, which
are crucial for supply chain assessment where environmental pressures have site-specific
characteristics (e.g. climate, soil type, water availability). Regionalisation in impact
assessment is a relatively young area, which is under constant development and more
consistency between characterisation and normalisation should be ensured over time.

11
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irrigation water demand on the continental scale: Europe’, Advances in Geosciences, Vol.
27, 2010, pp. 79-85
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List of abbreviations and definitions
CFs Characterization factors
CTUh Comparative toxic unit, human health
CTUe Comparative toxic unit, ecosystem
EF Environmental Footprint
EU27 European Union-27 (countries)
HCB Hexachlorobenzene
ILCD International Reference Life Cycle Data System
ISO International Organization for Standardisation
LCA Life cycle assessment
LCIA Life cycle impact assessment
LULUCF Land use, land-use change and forestry
NFs Normalisation factor
NMVOC Non-methane volatile organic compounds
PAH Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
POPs Persistent organic pollutants
Pt points (related to the scores of the soil quality index)

15
List of tables
Table 1. Global normalisation factors for emissions and resource extraction in 2010,
based on EF 2017 method (Sala et al 2017). The attributed score is from I-highest to III-
lowest .................................................................................................................. 3
Table 2. List of available data covering the elementary flows and sources by impact
category included in the global inventory for the calculation of the global normalisation
factors. ................................................................................................................ 6
Table 3. Criteria for evaluating the robustness of the global normalisation factors. ....... 8
Table 4. Global normalisation factors for emissions and resource extraction in 2010,
based on EF 2017 method (Sala et al 2017). The attributed score is from I-highest to III-
lowest .................................................................................................................10

16
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