The UNESCO Chair participates in the 5th Life Cycle Innovation Conference

Maria Iordanoglou from the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change at ESCI-UPF attended the 5th Life Cycle Innovation Conference (LCIC) 2026, held in Berlin from July 1st to 3rd and organised by the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSLCI).

Under the theme “Collaborate, Innovate, Co-Create,” the conference brought together roughly 200 participants from academia and industry through scientific presentations, posters, interactive workshops, and participant-driven “barcamp” sessions, all aimed at advancing life cycle assessment (LCA) and systems thinking.

During the conference, Iordanoglou participated in the poster session with her work, “From Lab to Industrial Scale: Engineering-based Prospective Scaling for the LCA of Bio-based Nanocellulose Electrodes,” developed within the framework of the GreenELECTRO project.

The research focuses on quantifying the environmental impact reduction achievable through the prospective upscaling of a novel bio-based electrode, following a scale-up framework. It also aims to benchmark the decarbonization potential of replacing conventional electrode materials with cellulose, while exploring the environmental trade-offs this substitution may involve.

The conference offered a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with LCA researchers and practitioners on a wide range of topics: methodological challenges such as data gap filling and uncertainty in prospective LCA, the evolving profile of the LCA practitioner of the future, the integration of social assessment, and the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in LCA, both as a tool to be leveraged and as a subject of impact assessment in its own right.

Several of these discussions stood out for how directly they connect to open challenges in the field. Data gap filling and uncertainty in prospective LCA remain central concerns as practitioners try to model technologies that don’t yet exist at scale, a challenge closely tied to Maria’s own work on scale-up frameworks.

The conversation around AI was similarly two-sided: participants discussed how AI can support and accelerate LCA modelling, while also examining the environmental footprint of AI systems themselves as a growing object of study within the field. Meanwhile, the discussion on the LCA practitioner of the future and the integration of social assessment pointed to a broader shift in the discipline, one that is moving beyond purely environmental metrics toward a more holistic understanding of sustainability that incorporates social and institutional dimensions.

Participation in LCIC 2026 contributes to the research activities of the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change at ESCI-UPF, reinforcing its work on LCA methodologies, environmental impact assessment, and the development of tools to support the transition towards more sustainable technologies. Engaging with the LCA community also feeds directly into the Chair’s ongoing efforts to advance interdisciplinary, science-based approaches to sustainability challenges. In line with the conference’s spirit of “Collaborate, Innovate, Co-Create,” this participation underscores the value of cross-sector dialogue between academia and industry in shaping the next generation of life cycle assessment practice.

This activity was carried out in collaboration with the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM, CSIC), the University of Girona (UdG) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

This research was funded by the Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) of the Generalitat de Catalunya, under the Climate Change 2023 call, for the “Green Electrodes for Sustainable Electrophysiology” (GreenELECTRO) project: 2023 CLIMA 00075.