Glossary

Glossary of climate change: L

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Term	Definition
Level of Scientific Understanding (LOSU)	This is an index on a 4-step scale (High, Medium, Low and Very Low) designed to characterise the degree of scientific understanding of the radiative forcing agents that effect climate change.
Levelised Cost	Lifetime costs and output of electricity generation technologies are discounted back to their present values to produce estimates of cost per unit of output (e.g. p/kWh).
Life-cycle	Life-cycle assessment tracks emissions generated and materials consumed for a product system over its entire life-cycle, from cradle to grave, including material production, product manufacture, product use, product maintenance and disposal at end of life. This includes biomass, where the CO2 released on combustion was absorbed by the plant matter during its growing lifetime.
Light Goods Vehicle	A van (weight up to 3.5 tonnes; classification N1 vehicle).
Lithium-ion Batteries	Modern batteries with relatively high energy storage density. Presently used widely in mobile phones and laptops and likely to be the dominant battery technology in the new generation of plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles.
Load factor	Number expressing the degree of occupancy of an aircraft (the higher the number, the fuller the aircraft) such that a full aircraft has a load factor of 100%.

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