Context :

To comply with the Paris Agreement and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, France targets an 81% reduction in industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 relative to 2015 levels. This involves adopting new technologies, such as low carbon fuels or CO2 capture, alongside optimizing processes like electrification. The LCA-SPLEEN project supports these efforts by offering metrics to assess environmental performance and identify pollution transfers.

As part of the LCA-SPLEEN project, this postdoctoral research project will contribute to develop a user-friendly tool enabling industry and researchers to integrate environmental data into decision-making. This project will focus on features to aid stakeholders in interpreting results for decarbonization and design decisions, by answering questions such as: In the specific context of industry decarbonization in France, how can preferences and constraints of researchers and industrial stakeholders be effectively integrated into a multi-criteria decision-making process? Which multi-criteria decision aid method should be used to interpret life cycle assessment (LCA) results? To which extent will the results vary depending on the stakeholder (e.g., research, industry, etc.)? Additional concerns include how to preserve information on impact transfers if aggregation is used and how to avoid compensation effects.

Tasks include (they may evolve based on the candidate’s interests):

 - Choose an existing method or design a method to transform the “raw” LCA results from the tool into targeted, decision-ready outcomes, ensuring the approach is transferable to other projects. This will involve conducting interviews to understand the decision-making processes of researcher or industrial and pinpointing the questions the tool should address.

- Contribute to the tool’s design:

• Develop the multi-criteria decision support module.
• Model missing technological component in the tool for the case studies: gather existing data from researchers and address data gaps with literature. The case studies have not yet been selected. They will be related to technologies developed in other PEPR SPLEEN projects (https://www.pepr-spleen.fr/).
• Describe the case studies in a document accessible to non-LCA experts to support the tool’s dissemination and adoption within the research community.

This work will be promoted by participation in conferences within and outside the PEPR SPLEEN and by the writing of at least one scientific article. The development of training material for the methods developed would also be a plus, to enable the method to be disseminated. The work will be carried out in close cooperation with CEA researchers in Grenoble (few travels to be planned).

Hard skills :

• Knowledge of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA)
• methods Knowledge of LCA

Soft Skills:

• Rigour and precision.
• Analytical mind and ability to solve complex problems.
• Good communication and presentation skills.
• Ability to work in a team and independently.
• Good mastery of French. A good mastery of English would also be appreciated.
• Ability to publish in peer-reviewed journals.

PhD obtained less than 3 years ago.

For further information and to apply, please contact: sibylle.duval-dachary@ifpen.fr