The limits of LCA. Study of the sustainability of a biodiesel from Brazilian palm oil.

Summary Life cycle assessment (LCA), as it is practiced today, can lead to biased results. The use of this tool is particularly sensitive in regulatory frameworks. Indeed, instead of encouraging companies to reduce their environmental impacts, certifications obtained from LCAs may produce the opposite effect: as they tend to reward industry averages rather than company-specific results, they may destroy any incentive for companies to act correctly on the environmental level. In this thesis, we propose management insights that can be useful for the evolution of LCA based on a case study of the sustainability assessment of a Brazilian palm oil biodiesel industry in the context of the RE Directive. Three main results emerge from this doctoral work. The first one is related to the reflection we are carrying out on the sustainability assessment imposed by the RE Directive. The second one refers to the concrete answers on the evaluation of the biodiesel sector evaluated with respect to the Directive, in particular with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. The third result concerns the identification of latent needs in terms of quality assessment of LCA data.