Mitigating Grand Challenges in Life Cycle Inventory Modeling through the Applications of Large Language Models

The accuracy of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies is often questioned due to the two grand challenges of life cycle inventory (LCI) modeling: (1) missing foreground flow data and (2) inconsistency in background data matching. Traditional mechanistic methods (e.g., process simulation) and existing machine learning (ML) methods (e.g., similarity-based selection methods) are inadequate due to their limitations in scalability and generalizability. The large language models (LLMs) are well-positioned to address these challenges, given the massive and diverse knowledge learned through the pretraining step. Incorporating LLMs into LCI modeling can lead to the automation of inventory data curation from diverse data sources and to the implementation of a multimodal analytical capacity. In this article, we delineated the mechanisms and advantages of LLMs to addressing these two grand challenges. We also discussed the future research to enhance the use of LLMs for LCI modeling, which includes the key areas such as improving retrieval augmented generation (RAG), integration with knowledge graphs, developing prompt engineering strategies, and fine-tuning pretrained LLMs for LCI-specific tasks. The findings from our study serve as a foundation for future research on scalable and automated LCI modeling methods that can provide more appropriate data for LCA calculations.