How Niko Used Hands-On LCA Training to Turn Sustainability Strategy into Product-Level LCA Execution
Company
Niko is a European manufacturer of electrical installation products and solutions, with a strong focus on innovation and sustainability. As their sustainability work developed, the company increasingly saw the value of building LCA capability within their own teams.
Why Niko Needed In-House LCA Capability
Niko initially relied on external consultants for compliance-driven LCA assessments of widely sold products, as the company did not yet have the internal LCA expertise or software to carry out the studies itself.
However, with Niko’s products and concepts changing frequently, working with external consultants became increasingly difficult. As Carl explained, some projects could change “every week, really, or even every day,” making it difficult to communicate changes and get updated information quickly. For complex products, the team also needed to communicate detailed technical information to the external party and ensure they understood the entire production process.
This meant that the team was losing time through communication and could not easily use external support at the pace required by R&D. As Carl put it, “learning Niko is more difficult than learning how to do LCAs.” The team therefore recognised that they needed to develop the skills to carry out LCAs themselves, within the R&D team, and find a way to scale this capability.
For Carl, this was also closely connected to his role in R&D, where he has been working to bring sustainability considerations into product development from the start:
“I’ve been trying to drive sustainability at Niko. As a mechanical engineer in the R&D team, I focus on creating long-lasting products with the lowest footprint we can achieve, which is why LCA is such an important part of our work.”
In a webinar with EIA, Carl shares how Niko turned this ambition into practice, building LCA capability within its R&D team and using LCA to support product development decisions. He also discusses the challenges of moving away from external LCA support, selecting the right software, and establishing a consistent approach to modelling across the team.
Want to hear more about how Niko made the transition?
Watch the webinarBuilding the Practical Skills to Bring LCA In-House
To support this shift, Niko reviewed around 15 LCA software options before ultimately selecting Earthster. Once the software decision was made, the next challenge was building practical experience in carrying out LCAs and learning how to use Earthster effectively. Environmental Impacts Academy’s Hands-On LCA Training stood out as the ideal solution because it offered exactly what the team needed: real, practical LCA experience using the same software they had just chosen.
Niko enrolled four employees in the program, three from R&D and one from compliance. Over the course of the training, the team worked through a complete LCA project in Earthster, gaining the confidence and hands-on capability required to move their LCA work forward. Carl described this as a “win-win,” because the team learned the methodology while producing an LCA the company could actually use.
Interested in building similar hands-on LCA competency in your company?
Developing an In-House LCA Capability That Drives Product Decisions
While working on their LCA project, they noticed how different modelling choices could lead to very different outcomes. That experience pushed them to create their own modelling rules so every assessment would follow the same assumptions and be comparable across products. Generic guidance didn’t fit their reality, and the training gave them the confidence to define rules that matched how Niko actually operates.
The turning point came when one of Carl’s colleagues, who had taken the training, built an LCA comparing different concepts for a new product. He used the LCA to show why one option performed better environmentally, and that insight directly changed the direction of the project. For Carl, this was the moment it became real: “we’re doing something that really is making a difference here.”
By the end of the training, Niko had moved from relying on external support to having an internal LCA capability that R&D could use confidently and consistently. The team finished with completed LCAs, shared modelling rules tailored to Niko’s reality, and a clear example of LCA guiding a real product decision. It marked the point where LCA had started to become a practical tool inside the organisation, not an outsourced service.
Ready to rely less on external LCA consultants?
If your team faces similar challenges, a short meeting with EIA can help you explore how to build practical LCA capability in-house, so your R&D team can respond to product changes faster and integrate LCA into product development.
