One of the most pertinent and enduring debates within the lifecycle assessment (LCA) community is on consequential (CLCA) and attributional LCA (ALCA), see for example, Weidema et al. (1999), Guinée et al.(2002), Ekvall and Andræ (2006), Schmidt (2010), Zamagni et al. (2012), Rehl et al. (2012), Anex and Lifset (2014), Brandão et al. (2014), Suh and Yang (2014), Dale and Kim (2014), Hertwich (2014), Plevin et al. (2014a), Plevin et al. (2014b), Ekvall et al. (2016), and Weidema et al. (2018). Amongst other things, the debate focuses on similarities and differences between these two modes and on which mode is more appropriate for which case or question. Some authors claimed superiority of one of these modes over the other (Plevin et al. 2014a; Weidema et al. 2018). Here, we refrain from further dwelling on this discussion, but rather discuss the more recent emergence of other modes of LCA. These new modes have been developed by independent scholars, outside the ISO standards (International Organization for Standardisation 2006) and outside national and continental guidelines (e.g., European Commission—Joint Research Centre—Institute for Environment and Sustainability 2010). They all focus on estimating life-cycle impacts of future systems and we argue that they are all varieties of analysis fitting under the umbrella of Bexplorative^ LCA. To substantiate this, we first look into the definitions of ALCA, CLCA, and some of the newer modes of LCA. We then briefly discuss similarities and differences between these different LCA modes, and conclude that rather than discussing different modes, the LCA community should focus on discussing their underlying real differences.

中文翻译：

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消化LCA的字母汤

生命周期评估 (LCA) 社区中最相关和最持久的争论之一是关于结果 (CLCA) 和归因 LCA (ALCA)，例如，参见 Weidema 等人。(1999)、Guinée 等人 (2002)、Ekvall 和 Andræ (2006)、Schmidt (2010)、Zamagni 等人。(2012), Rehl 等人。(2012)、Anex 和 Lifset (2014)、Brandão 等人。(2014)、Suh 和 Yang (2014)、Dale 和 Kim (2014)、Hertwich (2014)、Plevin 等。(2014a)，Plevin 等人。(2014b), Ekvall 等人。(2016) 和 Weidema 等人。(2018)。其中，争论的焦点是这两种模式之间的异同，以及哪种模式更适合哪种情况或问题。一些作者声称这些模式中的一种优于另一种（Plevin 等人，2014a；Weidema 等人，2018 年）。在这里，我们不进一步讨论这个讨论，而是讨论最近出现的其他 LCA 模式。这些新模式是由独立学者在 ISO 标准（国际标准化组织 2006）和国家和大陆指南（例如，欧盟委员会-联合研究中心-环境与可持续发展研究所 2010）之外开发的。它们都专注于估计未来系统的生命周期影响，我们认为它们都是 Bexplorative LCA 下的各种分析拟合。为了证实这一点，我们首先研究 ALCA、CLCA 和一些较新的 LCA 模式的定义。然后我们简要讨论这些不同 LCA 模式之间的异同，并得出结论，LCA 社区不应讨论不同的模式，而应专注于讨论它们潜在的真正差异。