sophie fallaha
MScA candidate
(Chemical Engineering Department - École Polytechnique de Montréal)
sophie.fallaha@polymtl.ca
Expertise :
- Life Cycle Assessment
- Greenhouse gas accounting
Start: January 2007
Director: Réjean Samson
Co-director: Louise Deschênes
Research project:
Combining life cycle thinking to corporate greenhouse gas accounting
Project summary:
The research project addressed the following problematic: will life cycle thinking help corporate GHG accounting to give a better representation of corporate environmental impact?
The idea of combining life cycle thinking to GHG accounting comes from LCA’s definition itself. In fact, LCA envisions the environmental analysis of a product or a service in a holistic way. Thus, the assessment does not focus on only one life cycle phase or on the sole GHG emissions. It encompasses other impacts categories such as ozone depletion, acidification, ecotoxicity, etc. Moreover, it helps preventing impact shifting from one point to another.
The project was based on the following research hypothesis: corporate GHG accounting is embedded in LCA. Then, a new conceptual approach was developed presenting GHG accounting as an annual discretisation of a 3-dimensionnal representation of LCA, focusing on the sole climate change impact category.
Publications/presentations:
FALLAHA, S., MARTINEAU, G., BÉCAERT, V., AOUSTIN, E., DESCHENES, L. and SAMSON, R. (2009). Life Cycle Thinking: A Step Ahead in Carbon Footprinting. SETAC Europe 19th Annual Meeting. Göteborg, Sweden.
FALLAHA, S., MARTINEAU, G., BAGE, G., DESCHENES, L. and SAMSON, R. (2008). LCA in GHG quantification : more than a may be. 34e Forum de discussion « Life cycle assessment versus CO2 footprinting ». Lausanne, Switzerland.
FALLAHA, S., MARTINEAU, G., BAGE, G., DESCHENES, L. and SAMSON, R. (2007). L’ACV en quantification des gaz à effet de serre : plus qu’une simple question de pertinence. Cycle2007 – Vers une économie cycle de vie. Montreal, Canada.
Career path:
In May 2006, Sophie Fallaha received her bachelor degree in chemical engineering from the École Polytechnique of Montreal, following two internships, the first one in environment and the second one in polymer engineering. During two consecutive years, she took part to industrial missions focusing on corporate strategy, innovation and international competition. Those extracurricular activities lead her to People’s Republic of China in 2005 and Poland and Czech Republic in 2006.
A project on industrial ecology gave her the opportunity to meet up with the team from the CIRAIG where she began her M.Sc.A. research project in January 2007. The later was meant possible thanks to the industrial partnership developed between Veolia Environment and CIRAIG’s industrial chair on life cycle assessment methodology.