A methodological improvement for assessing petrochemical projects through life cycle assessment and eco-costs

Purpose As the debate on how to effectively link life cycle analysis (LCA) and negative externalities of the products or processes is still unsolved, an improved methodology that involves the private and social (environment) profitability to petrochemical projects in Mexico is presented. We incorporate both environmental impacts, identified through the LCA, using the eco-costs model, within a project appraisal analysis. The eco-costs are a single LCA-based indicator of environmental burden, based on the concept of marginal prevention costs, i.e. costs required to bring back the environmental degradation to a sustainable level.