Handbook

Welcome to the PrismLCA handbook

PrismLCA is free software for life cycle assessment. You draw your product system, connect it to background data, calculate its environmental impacts and turn the results into a study report — on your own computer, with an AI assistant that can do much of the work for you if you want it to.

New here? Start with these#

Four pages take you from download to your first result. They assume no prior knowledge of the software and no programming at all.

1 · Install PrismLCADownload, install and start the app on Windows or Linux. 2 · Set up a workspaceBring in background data: the free BAFU database or your own ecoinvent. 3 · Find your way aroundThe window in one picture: navigation, canvas, panels and the assistant. 4 · Your first modelA small product system, end to end, in about twenty minutes.

What PrismLCA does#

An LCA asks what a product costs the environment over its life: the materials, the energy, the transport, the use and the disposal. PrismLCA lets you answer that question in four movements:

  1. Model#

    Draw your product system as connected processes on a canvas — the foreground you know best.

  2. Connect#

    Link it to background data for everything you did not measure yourself: electricity, steel, transport. You can start with the free BAFU database or import ecoinvent if you hold a licence.

  3. Calculate#

    Choose impact methods such as EF 3.1 and calculate. PrismLCA uses the open-source engine Brightway, so every number can be traced.

  4. Report#

    Compare scenarios, find the hotspots and write the study report — by hand, or drafted by the assistant and released by you.

Three things worth knowing#

  • Your data stays on your computer. There is no account and no cloud. Models, results and reports are files on your machine; nothing leaves it unless you switch a feature on.
  • Changes are stored as you make them. There is no Save button for your model: every edit is kept the moment you make it, and the audit log lets you take it back.
  • Background data is read-only. A background dataset on your canvas is a reference. To change one, you make a local copy first, so the original database is never altered.

How this handbook is organised#

Get startedInstall, set up, find your way, first model. DataBackground databases, your library, imports. AI assistantSet up, work with it, research, prompts. ModellingCanvas, datasets, parameters, scenarios, tags. ResultsCalculate, compare, find hotspots, methods. ReportsThe full study report and the short report. External agents (MCP)Let Claude Code, Codex or Claude Desktop drive PrismLCA. ReferenceSettings, privacy, glossary, troubleshooting.

Throughout the handbook, boxes like these mark what matters:

Paths through the app's menus look like SettingsAIProvider, keys like Delete. Click any screenshot to see it full size. Press Ctrl K to search the handbook.

    ↑↓ to move · Enter to open · Esc to close