🇪🇺Environmental Footprint (EF)

What is Environmental Footprint ?

The Environmental Footprint (EF) characterization model is the European Commission's recommended Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method for quantifying environmental impacts.

This method is used in Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) frameworks.

How does it work?

EF operates at the midpoint level, aggregating emissions and resource extractions into characterized impacts via CFs derived from consensus models evaluated for European relevance.

For freshwater ecotoxicity, EF 3.1 characterization factors (expressed in CTUe/kg emitted) derive from effect factors (EF = 0.2 / HC20), fate, and exposure factors.

EF vs USEtox

EF and USEtox models share a common structure for freshwater ecotoxicity characterization. They combine fate, exposure, and effect factors into comparative toxic units (CTUe/kg emitted).

However they differ in key parameters and data handling leading to often higher (more protective) CFs in EF 3.1.

Illustration : effect factor differences

USEtox uses EF=0,5/HC50, where HC50 is the concentration affecting 50% of species (median sensitivity).

EF 3.1 uses EF=0,2/HC20, targeting the concentration affecting 20% of species (protecting sensitive taxa).

Since HC20 < HC50, EF 3.1 yields larger effect factors for equivalent toxicity data, amplifying characterized impacts.