2.4.3. Economic Burden

In contrast to environmental burdens, the economic ones are directly related to the success of a product meeting a demand (or providing a function) under ideal market conditions. In real markets, this is interleaved with numerous adaptations such as subsidies, taxes, cross funding, market distortions and many more. However, the economic burdens and its underlying structure are a key aspect of any artificial system. They depict the resource demand of the product scaled by the scarcity of its constituting elements in the actual economic conditions. Scarcity is created as an artificial value based on availability and demand. It is modified by the adaptations stated above and is represented by the price of each element, which deals as intermediary and as such facilitates flexible handling of resources. Even though most nonhuman biological systems do not have an intermediating currency its resource demand is also strongly affected by the scarcity of the constituting elements such as water, solar energy, space or trace minerals.

The economically expressed scarcity in terms of a monetary cost structure determines the aspect of economic burden. It depicts the restrictions and framework conditions that are imposed through the embeddedness of the product in the economic system. While the relevance of each constituting element is different to the environmental burden contribution, the system that is taken into regard is ought to be consistent. The method of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) provides such a consistent framework and can be regarded as consolidated in sustainability science [68]. However, it does imply several fundamental differences due to time relatedness and the consideration of nonmaterial elements and is therefore applied in a multistage adaptation, starting with process immanent costs (PIC) and including further nonmaterial information (FNI) if available. Table 2 depicts the categories that are differentiated in the economic burden assessment. As they all are assessed in monetary values, they can be added without weighting. The assessment of the different cost categories is an integral part of the enhanced Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) model, that has been created through coupling the GaBi database with statistical cost data through the mapping of flows to sectors based on European statistics [56,69]. Thus, the cost structure can automatically be derived for the complete LCI model, providing the same system boundaries and level of detail than for the environmental assessment.


**Table 2.** Categories and weighting structure for the assessment of the economic burden.

In contrast to most Life Cycle Costing models, the model does not include time-related price change or discount rates, as this is not ye<sup>t</sup> possible in the enhanced LCI model. This however ensures consistency with the environmental burden aspect, as there are no discounting issues considered as well. However, this simplification comes along with several drawbacks in comparability to other economic analyses including potential communication issues.
