Brightcon 2026 brought together researchers, practitioners, developers and other stakeholders working on quantitative sustainability assessment and life cycle assessment (LCA). The conference focuses on fostering an open and collaborative ecosystem around LCA tools, data and methods, providing a space for participants to exchange knowledge, explore new approaches and work together on the further development of sustainability assessment.
The 2026 edition, held in Aalborg, Denmark, from 20 to 25 September, was themed “Collaboration: Mixing Tools, Data and People”. The programme featured presentations, workshops and keynote sessions and was preceded by courses and a hackathon. The event welcomed 93 onsite and 129 online participants, with attendees from universities, research institutes, industry, government and other organisations across Europe and beyond.
Thomas Arblaster from Leiden University’s Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), representing SSbD4CheM, presented “Formalising product systems which represent dispersed functions with metabolic time-explicit LCA” in the T2 – Methods & Frontiers session on September 24th.
The presentation built on previous SSbD4CheM work exploring how prospective and time-explicit LCA can support Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD). It addressed conceptual and practical challenges emerging from recent developments in LCA tools and datasets and discussed potential directions for future tool development. The presentation also highlighted the need for a common and internally consistent conceptual foundation to ensure that new developments in ex-ante LCA can effectively support SSbD.
Instead of conventional presentation slides, a Jupyter notebook was used to demonstrate the underlying concepts and methods. The presentation built on previous SSbD4CheM work exploring how prospective and time-explicit LCA can support Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD).
The presentation is publicly available in Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23062032). A recording of the presentation is also planned to be made publicly available online.
The presentation was followed by a valuable discussion with members of the LCA community, providing a range of perspectives and inputs for the project’s ongoing work. Participation in Brightcon also offered an opportunity to connect with stakeholders from different sectors and gain insights into current developments in LCA.
