To begin performing your calculation, you need to create a project. The available project types will be determined by the type of license you have purchased. If you have not purchased a license yet, you can also start a trial project or use our free Planetary tool: One Click LCA Planetary - Free Embodied Carbon Tool.
How To Create Your First Project
Select your project type
Click the 'Add' or 'Start a free trial' button at the top-right of the screen to choose the type of project you wish to create, as shown below.
If you have a commercial license to one of the modules, it will say 'License available'. If you have purchased a concurrent license, you will need to check out your license first.
Link your license and fill in some basic information about your project
If you are a commercial user:
The first step in project creation is linking the project to your commercial license.
If you are not sure if you have the right access, see our article related to activating a commercial license here.
If you are trialling One Click LCA:
A number of available trial options will show up, you can start either of these however the most common trial option based on your geography will be listed on the top.
For more information on starting a trial, check out the related article here.
If you are a student or educational user:
Students or educational users use the license slightly differently from commercial users; in the majority of cases, they activate their projects using a license key.
If you are a student and requested a free student license, guidance for activating your project can be found here: Free One Click LCA Student License (Building LCA)
If you are a student and use One Click LCA through your university, further guidance can be found here: Universities - Free Coursework Licenses for Universities
Add information about your project location and type. You will need to add a project name, type, and country as these are mandatory fields.
All new building projects must now include a project address. This ensures automatic assignment of regional assumptions - including climate zone, default emissions factors, and benchmarking logic - from the outset. It improves model precision and supports alignment with regulatory frameworks such as EU Level(s). If you don't have an address yet, you can also fill this in with the city or country where the project is expected to take place.
Add any optional information you wish to add to your project
Add further details about the Gross Floor Area, number of floors, frame type, etc. of your project. You can also click to choose a certification pursued. However, this selection does not affect the LCA calculations, it only shows an icon of the pursued certification on the main page beside the project name. These fields do not need to be completed, and any details can be edited after the project has been created.
Add further additional information
Under 'Additional information' you can how record additional information about your project including project number and year of construction. Furthermore, there is now the option to mark a project as classified, meaning that access to them is highly restricted and they are excluded from shared analytics and dashboards. This is essential for NDA-bound projects, confidential R&D or competitive tenders. Existing projects are treated as confidential by default.
Once you click 'Next', you have created your project and can continue by creating designs.