Carlos Felipe Blanco Rocha
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. C.F. Blanco Rocha
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 4371
- c.f.blanco@cml.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-8199-8420
Carlos Felipe obtained his PhD degree at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), where he also obtained his M.Sc. degree in Industrial Ecology. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia.
Professional experience
Carlos Felipe obtained his PhD degree at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), where he also obtained his M.Sc. degree in Industrial Ecology. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia. Between 2006-2014, Carlos Felipe worked in the mining industry as a Health, Safety, Environment and Community Relations (HSEC) manager in several countries in Latin America including Chile, Peru, Colombia, Guyana and Brazil. In these roles, he led social and environmental impact studies for mining and minerals exploration projects, developed environmental mine closure plans and served as a lead EHS critical incident investigator. He was also tasked with environmental auditing and implementing ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 standards and related training programmes. In the period 2014-2018 Carlos Felipe worked as an independent sustainability consultant for the mining, energy and forestry sectors and developed software solutions for stakeholder engagement programs in several large-scale mining projects.
In his PhD thesis, Carlos Felipe proposed various methods to appraise the safety and sustainability of emerging technologies and demonstrated them with a case study of high-efficiency III-V/Silicon solar cells. In his MSc thesis, Carlos Felipe developed a framework to assess ecosystem services in LCA and demonstrated it by a case study of water supply for mining in the north of Chile. The M.Sc. thesis was awarded the Stans prize by CML in 2016.
Research topic
Carlos Felipe’s current research focus is Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (including LCA and Social-LCA) and Ecological Risk Assessment of emerging technologies with a special focus on safe and sustainable design of energy technologies. Developing quantitative forward-looking models in these domains requires comprehensive and robust methods for scenario analysis, uncertainty analysis and global sensitivity analysis. Carlos Felipe’s current research aims to increase the applicability and usefulness of such methods in the field of sustainability and to establish linkages with developments in related fields such as Bayesian Analysis and Machine Learning.
Carlos Felipe is currently a main lecturer for the course Society’s Metabolism in the Industrial Ecology master’s programme and supports the LCA Practice & Reporting course offered by the same programme. He is also the main lecturer for the course Environment & Development offered by Leiden University College.
Assistant professor
- Science
- Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen Leiden
- CML/Industriele Ecologie
- Blanco Rocha C.F., Quik J.T.K., Hof M., Fuortes A., Behrens P.A., Cucurachi S., Peijnenburg W.J.G.M., Dimroth F. & Vijver M.G. (2024), A prospective ecological risk assessment of high-efficiency III–V/silicon tandem solar cells, Environmental Science Processes & Impacts 26(3): 540-554.
- Jouannais P., Blanco Rocha C.F. & Pizzol M. (2024), ENvironmental Success under Uncertainty and Risk (ENSURe): a procedure for probability evaluation in ex-ante LCA, Technological Forecasting and Social Change 201: 123265.
- Kokubo Roche A., Tsalidis G.A., Blanco Rocha C.F., Dias D.F.C. & Posada J.A. (2024), Generic and site-specific social life cycle assessment of municipal wastewater treatment systems in Spain: challenges and limitations of the method when applied to resource recovery systems, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment : .
- Blanco C.F., Pauliks N., Donati F., Engberg N. & Weber J. (2024), Machine Learning to support prospective Life Cycle Assessment of emerging chemical technologies, Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry : 100979.
- Subramanian V., Peijnenburg W.J.G.M., Vijver M.G., Blanco C.F., Cucurachi S. & Guinée J.B. (2023), Approaches to implement safe by design in early product design through combining risk assessment and Life Cycle Assessment, Chemosphere 311(Part 1): 137080.
- Koese J.M., Blanco Rocha C.F., Vert V.B. & Vijver M.G. (2023), A social life cycle assessment of vanadium redox flow and lithium-ion batteries for energy storage, Journal of Industrial Ecology 27(1): 223-237.
- Soeteman-Hernández L.G., Blanco Rocha C.F., Koese J.M., Sips A.J.A.M., Noorlander C.W. & Peijnenburg W.J.G.M. (2023), Life cycle thinking and safe-and-sustainable-by-design approaches for the battery innovation landscape, iScience 26(3): 106060.
- Cucurachi S. & Blanco C.F. (2023), Practical solutions for ex-ante LCA illustrated by emerging PV technologies. In: Florin M.V. & Rusu A.G. (Eds.), Ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging technologies: Lausanne, EPFL. 149-167.
- Cucurachi S., Blanco Rocha C.F., Steubing B.R.P. & Heijungs R. (2022), Implementation of uncertainty analysis and moment‐independent global sensitivity analysis for full‐scale life cycle assessment models, Journal of Industrial Ecology 26(2): 374-391.
- Blanco Rocha C.F. (8 September 2022), Guiding safe and sustainable technological innovation under uncertainty : a case study of III-V/silicon photovoltaics (Dissertatie. Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Faculty of Science, Leiden University). Supervisor(s) and Co-supervisor(s): Vijver M.G. & Peijnenburg W.J.G.M., Cucurachi S.
- Koese J.M., Blanco Rocha C.F., Breeman G.E. & Vijver M.G. (2022), Towards a more resource-efficient solar future in the EU: an actor-centered approach, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 45: 36-51.
- Adrianto L.R., Hulst M.K. van der, Tokaya J.P., Arvidsson R., Blanco Rocha C.F., Caldeira C., Guillén-Gonsálbez G., Sala S., Steubing B.R.P., Buyle M., Kaddoura M., Navarre N.H., Pedneault J., Pizzol M., Salieri B., Harmelen T. van & Hauck M. (2021), How can LCA include prospective elements to assess emerging technologies and system transitions? : The 76th LCA discussion forum on life cycle assessment, 19 November 2020, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 26(8): 1541-1544.
- Blanco Rocha C.F., Cucurachi S., Peijnenburg W.J.G.M., Beames A. & Vijver M.G. (2020), Are Technological Developments Improving the Environmental Sustainability of Photovoltaic Electricity?, Energy Technology 8(11): 1901064.
- Blanco Rocha C.F., Cucurachi S., Guinee J.B., Vijver M.G., Peijnenburg W.J.G.M., Trattnig R. & Heijungs R. (2020), Assessing the sustainability of emerging technologies: A probabilistic LCA method applied to advanced photovoltaics, Journal of Cleaner Production 259: 120968.
- Blanco Rocha C.F., Cucurachi S., Dimroth F., Guinée J.B., Peijnenburg W.J.G.M. & Vijver M.G. (2020), Environmental impacts of III–V/silicon photovoltaics: life cycle assessment and guidance for sustainable manufacturing, Energy & Environmental Science 13(11): 4280-4290.
- Cucurachi S. & Blanco Rocha C.F. (2019), 31 - Life-cycle assessment of engineered nanomaterials. In: Cucurachi S. & Blanco Rocha C.F. (Eds.), Nanotechnology in Eco-efficient Construction. Nanotechnology in Eco-efficient Construction: Woodhead Publishing. 815-846.
- Blanco Rocha C.F., Penedo De Sousa Marques A. & Bodegom P.M. van (2018), An integrated framework to assess impacts on ecosystem services in LCA demonstrated by a case study of mining in Chile, Ecosystem Services 30(Part B): 211-219.
- Employed as a Senior Scientist
- Database consulting and management