Deepak Rajagopal in the DSM Observer: LCA of deep sea mining for minerals
Deepak Rajagopal, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, explains that LCA is valuable for individual mining contractors to identify where much of the cost and emissions arise in deep-sea mining and how this compares to alternatives at each step in the production chain and it can help civil society understand the overall costs and emissions compared to the long-term potential of the mining activity. “LCA is very useful at early stages of a new technology,” says Rajagopal, “but extrapolating LCAs to infer anything about long-run or large-scale impact is very challenging. It is best used to identify hot-spots or vulnerabilities in the supply chain and try to alter the design or supply chain before things solidify too much.”