Empa researchers join Quantis

Empa’s research activities in the area of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) have gained a lot of interest and are internationally recognized, especially in the fields of energy, mobility, materials and buildings, as well as in databases management. To further improve industry cooperation and know-how dissemination, Empa and Quantis decided to start a new cooperation. While Empa will focus its activities on research on methodological challenges in LCA, Quantis will, in turn, take over the LCA service activities from Empa.

“Empa is very pleased to hand over well-established LCA services to Quantis and looks forward to a fruitful cooperation with Quantis in the future”, says Empa CEO, Gian‐Luca Bona. A new Quantis branch will start its activities on 1 May 2013 at the Empa technology center glaTec in Dübendorf near Zürich. The new branch will be led by Rainer Zah, currently head of the LCA group at Empa’s “Technology and Society” laboratory. The team consists of renowned experts in the field of LCA modeling and inventory data. With high complementarity concerning expertise, business sectors and geographic area, the new Quantis branch will focus on LCA services and applied research in the fields of energy, mobility, materials and buildings, as well as Life Cycle databases, and serve the Swiss German and German markets.

“The collaboration with Empa will strengthen the position of Quantis as a recognized global leader that helps organizations move towards sustainability through the life cycle approach”, says Yves Loerincik, CEO of Quantis. “With its offices in Switzerland (Lausanne, Zürich and Bellinzona), and in France (Lyon and Paris), Quantis is well positioned to work with organizations across Europe”, said Caroline Coquerel, Managing Director of the Quantis branch based in Lausanne.

Quantis was founded in 2009 following a joint venture of the Swiss Ecointesys - Life Cycle Systems, a spin-off from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland founded in 2006, and the consulting team of the Canadian Interuniversity Research Center for the Life Cycle of Products, Processes and Services (CIRAIG), located at École Polytechnique of Montréal, Canada. A spin-off from two major engineering schools, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the École Polytechnique de Montréal, Quantis benefits from having among the best experts in Life Cycle Assessment while maintaining close ties with university research.