LCA automation is the use of scripting and programmatic tools to run Life Cycle Assessment calculations, process data, and manipulate models without doing it all by hand.
As LCA becomes more complex, the traditional approach of creating models within the graphical user interface of standard software is gradually becoming less appropriate. Automation is required as we enter a world of mass scenario analysis, prospective LCA, and integration with AI tools.
Most major LCA tools have a level of automation, which varies significantly in capability, applicability, and cost.
What can LCA automation actually do?
Automation goes well beyond running the same calculation faster. Some examples of what becomes possible:
- Batch calculations across large product portfolios, where the same model runs with different inputs for each product variant
- Scenario comparison, defining multiple sets of parameter values in a spreadsheet and calculating all of them in one run
- Sensitivity analysis, systematically varying individual parameters to identify which inputs have the biggest influence on results
- Prospective LCA, modelling future scenarios with projected energy mixes, technology changes, or policy shifts
- Data import and export, pulling inputs from external systems and writing results to structured formats for reporting
- Integration with business systems, connecting LCA calculations to ERP, PLM, or product design workflows
None of this requires abandoning the GUI entirely. Some tools let you build models visually and automate the calculations, others work entirely in code.
What’s available
openLCA IPC exposes openLCA’s calculation engine through a built-in server that external programs can talk to. Models can be built in the GUI as normal and then calculated from scripts, or built entirely from code. The server works from any language that can make HTTP requests (Python, R, MATLAB, Julia, JavaScript), runs on any operating system, and supports JSON-RPC (the default from the GUI), with gRPC and REST available for other deployment configurations. GreenDelta provides an official Python client library. Free and open source.
Brightway is an open-source LCA framework written entirely in Python. The model is built and calculated in code, with tight integration into the Python scientific ecosystem (NumPy, SciPy, pandas). It has a strong research community, with tools like Premise for prospective LCA and Temporalis for dynamic LCA built on top of it. Activity Browser provides a GUI on top of Brightway for those who want a visual interface.
SimaPro COM interface allows automation through Microsoft’s COM protocol. This requires a separate SimaPro Developer licence on top of the standard licence, and only works on Windows. The official documentation covers VBA, Delphi, C++, Visual Basic, PHP, and C#.
GaBi/Sphera offers enterprise automation modules that connect to ERP and PLM systems for portfolio-wide product carbon footprint generation. These are aimed at enterprise integration with existing business systems.
Of these, openLCA offers broad protocol and language support. The IPC server works from anything that can make an HTTP request, and the gRPC .proto files let you generate native client code for C++, Java, Go, Kotlin, and others. The IPC server can do everything from running batch calculations to building complete models programmatically. The scripting abilities of openLCA are not widely used, which is a shame, as it is incredibly powerful.
We should be transparent. Below280 is the UK partner for openLCA, so we are biased. But, the reason for this is that our director, Tom Bradley, found openLCA incredibly powerful and useful during his PhD research.
openLCA scripting in practice
We’ve built an openLCA Scripting and Automation Knowledge Base with practical guides and working code examples. It covers connecting to openLCA from Python, understanding parameters, and includes example scripts for scenario calculations and sensitivity analysis. All code is open source on our Below280 Life Cycle Assessment GitHub.
If you need to go beyond the examples in the knowledge base, Below280 also develops bespoke automated LCA workflows and provides openLCA scripting training. Get in touch if that’s of interest.