Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment

Input-output life cycle assessment (IO-LCA) estimates the environmental burdens of a product or service over its life cycle by representing it as a unit of final demand within an environmentally extended input-output model. Rather than mapping individual processes, it leverages the Leontief inverse to capture the complete, economy-wide supply chain at once, eliminating the truncation that limits process-based LCA. Popularized by Hendrickson, Lave, and Matthews, IO-LCA and its hybrid extensions are distinct from process LCA in scope, data, and the way system boundaries are drawn.