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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Life Cycle Costing (eLCC) are useful methods for evaluating the environmental, energy and economic performances of innovative energy storage technologies. By using these methods, the production process of a small Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Unitized Regenerative Fuel Cell (PEM-URFC) stack has been investigated, aiming to assess its environmental, energy and economic impacts at the early design stage and to identify the contributions of its various components on these impacts. Indeed, the PEM-URFC stack includes Critical Raw Materials that affect the product's sustainability. Results show that the highest contributions are associated with the platinum group metals used for the catalyst and, to a lesser degree, the materials and energy used for the bipolar plates and porous transport layers. However, considering that the datasets for representing the impacts of one of the electrocatalysts (Iridium Ruthenium Oxide) are still missing in LCA commercial databases and literature, a sensitivity analysis is performed assuming its impact to be similar to that of other Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) extracted with them (e.g., Platinum, Nickel, Palladium, etc.). The analysis shows a high difference in results due to data and methodological assumptions, making the assimilation of Iridium Ruthenium Oxide to Rhodium the worst scenario, increasing environmental impacts by 37.54 %, energy impacts by 40.48 % and environmental price by 45.08 %. Moreover, the study identified issues for applying life cycle thinking approaches on URFC devices that must be resolved in future studies (e.g., increase the reliability of catalyst inventory data or improve guidelines on energy storage technologies)., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

With the increasing interest in Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) applications for assessing the sustainability of processes, products and services, up-to-date syntheses and evidence-based critical outcomes analysis are required to guide future studies and policymakers. The systematic literature review is probably the most suitable approach for highlighting evidence of effects, impacts, and methodological choices, mapping the current knowledge and gaps in LCT fields, including methods such as Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Costing, Social Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment. Although several statements and guidelines for health care and ecology disciplines and one checklist for systematic literature review limited to Life Cycle Assessment (STARR-LCA) exist, it is still missing a framework for conducting systematic literature reviews in LCT field. This paper proposes a "Framework for systematic Literature review to Analyse Vast InformAtion in Life Cycle Thinking studies" (FLAVIA-LCT) to assist and guide researchers in structuring the processes of gathering, synthesising, and reporting outcomes from search strategy development to critical evaluation, considering the essential information to be included in a review manuscript. This framework can be used by anyone planning a literature review on one or more LCT methods., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

This study assesses the energy and environmental performances of electricity produced from Italian anaerobic digestion coupled with combined heat and power plants. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology is applied to a set of plants characterised by different power sizes (from 100 to 999 kW) and feedstock compositions (variable rates of agricultural products and by-products). Then, the average eco-profile of the produced electricity is compared with electricity produced by the national grid and photovoltaic panels. The analysis allows detection of the combinations of size and feedstock with the lowest impacts. They correspond to small and medium plants mainly fed by organic by-products. In addition, compared to electricity from the grid, the average biogas electricity is characterised by the lowest contribution in impacts categories, such as abiotic depletion potential and ozone layer depletion potential, while largest in acidification and eutrophication. Focusing on global warming potential and cumulative energy demand fossil, the impacts of average biogas electricity (155 kgCO 2eq /MWh and 172 MJ/MWh) are about 35 % and 38 % of that generated by the grid. Furthermore, it could generate 47 % less of the impact in the abiotic depletion elements category of the solar system. To enhance the farms' environmental and economic sustainability and balance the electric grid, these outcomes point out that biogas electricity produced from the agriculture and livestock sector can contribute to the decarbonisation and self-sufficiency of European countries. The results strictly depend on the operative conditions and can aid policymakers at the global level in improving the energy supply security and sustainability. Further, they provide reliable information to stakeholders to select the most sustainable solution, according to the feedstock type, power supply, and management., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In the past, lowest price was the award criterion, given that structural capacity and safety were assured. In the last years, environmental, energy, and long-term impacts have been introduced (climate change, resource depletion, energy consumption, generated solid waste, discharged water, and emissions). Unfortunately, the introduction of new pavement technologies and materials (i.e., waste plastics) affects maintenance and rehabilitation processes and call for accurate and timeliness studies and criteria. Consequently, this paper presents an energy and environmental assessment of an Italian urban road and considers different material-related scenarios that fully comply with emerging technologies. A life-cycle approach is applied to assess energy and environmental impacts of a typical Italian urban road, according to the ISO 14040 series. In more detail, the authors assess the energy and environmental profile of different scenarios of bituminous mixtures. The aim of scenario analysis is to identify the less impacting scenario from an energy and environmental point of view. For each analyzed scenario, the contribution of each life-cycle step to the total impacts and the energy and environmental hotspots are identified in order to define suitable options for improvement. The results of the analysis show that step of material production, including raw material extraction and resource supply, is relevant to almost all the assessed impact categories (average contribution higher than 50%). This is mainly due to the production of bitumen, which is a petroleum-based product. Moreover, the scenario analysis highlights that the pavement scenarios that are characterized by the use of recycled materials involve lower energy and environmental impacts, due to the saving of virgin raw materials and avoided impacts for disposal., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)