In collaboration with colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Sciences CML, Leiden University’s SiTaSol project team developed a protocol to integrate open-source Life Cycle Assessment software with state-of-the-art Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) methods. This protocol was first developed and piloted for the front metallization aspects of the SiTaSol III-V/Si cells.
The protocol allowed for fast and accurate computation of sensitivity indices of LCA systems which have much higher dimensionality than most models to which GSA was previously applied. The protocol was packaged in a way that is easy to use and accessible to the wider community of LCA practitioners. The protocol is now free to download as a branch of the Activity-Browser interface for the open-source LCA software Brightway 2.0. The work was developed by Stefano Cucurachi, Carlos Blanco, Bernhard Steubing, Reinout Heijungs and Daniel de Koning from CML.