Niklas Letmathe

2023

In recent years, climate change has begun to impact human life and the economy. Therefore, sustainability is receiving increasing attention. The measurement of environmental impact has become an important area of research to achieve a sustainable economy. This literature review analyzes standards related to measuring environmental impact, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA), Publicly Available Specification 2050 (PAS 2050), Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol), and others. The aim of this literature review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the measurement standards used for assessing environmental impacts, primarily related to greenhouse gases, with a focus on the differences in their application. Among all the regions focused on in the selected 39 papers, Europe received the most attention. LCA is the most widely used and mentioned measurement standard in our review. Half of the papers are distributed in the agricultural, food, and beverage sectors, which are the two sectors most concerned with using measurement standards to reduce environmental impact. In addition, over half of the papers solely focused on GHG as the measurement subject. However, it's worth noting that more papers focused GHG and other environmental impacts after 2021. Additionally, more papers since 2021 concentrated on non-European countries. Furthermore, we found that there is still a lack of comparisons between different measurement standards in this field. Companies and organizations require more research in this regard to make informed choices of suitable measurement standards and efficient reduction strategies for their environmental impacts.