Coupling Brightway2 with the Stochastic Technology Choice Model

Here we present how we have adopted the Stochastic Technology Choice Model to assess the consequential environmental impacts due to the introduction of a new PET chemical recycling technology in the European market. Such approach allows to model the competition among several technologies within the LCA study. To solve this problem, the Stochastic Technology Choice Model performs a cost-effective optimization, while accounting for capacity constraints and adopting a stochastic approach. Firstly, Brightway2 was used to integrate consequential LCA calculations with the following step of the optimization within the same Brightway2 project. Secondly, Brightway2 allowed to obtain Monte Carlo results that could be coherently used as independent information modules in the subsequent optimization step. Such coherence means that for each Monte Carlo iteration, results were computed by keeping the same technosphere matrix while evaluating different final demand vectors.