The First City Organizational LCA Case Study: Feasibility and Lessons Learned from Vienna

Cities are recognized as a major contributor to environmental pressures. Recently, organizational LCA (OLCA) has been found align well with requirements for city-scale decision support and novel city-OLCA framework was introduced. City-OLCA combines two relevant aspects: It covers activities beyond public service provision (multi-stakeholder) emissions greenhouse gases (multi-impact). Its unique approach of acknowledging responsibility levels should help both city-managers academia in performance tracking prioritize mitigation measures. The goal this work is test city-OLCA’s feasibility first case study real city data from Vienna. confirmed, results 12 impact categories were obtained. As an example, Vienna’s global warming potential, ozone depletion marine eutrophication potential 2016 14,686 kt CO2 eq., 6796 kg CFC-11 310 t N respectively. Our indicate that current accounting practices may underestimate gas the entire by up factor 3. This mainly due additional not covered conventional standards (food goods consumption). While itself only accounts 25% gases, 75% caused or governmental responsibilities. Based on our results, we encourage managers include based defining reduction strategies. will reveal blind spots avoids underestimating burdens, which might lead setting wrong focus mitigation.