The cost‐benefit analysis and economic input–output model are available at the website www.eiolca.net. An economic input–output life cycle assessment, or EIOLCA, involves the use of aggregate sector‐level data to quantify the amount of environmental impact that can be directly attributed to each sector of the economy and how much each sector purchases from other sectors in producing its output. Combining such data sets can enable accounting for long chains (e.g. building an automobile requires energy, but producing energy requires vehicles, and building those vehicles requires energy, etc.), which somewhat alleviates the scoping problem of traditional life cycle assessments. EIOLCA analysis traces out the various economic transactions, resource requirements, and environmental emissions (including all the various manufacturing, transportation, mining, and related requirements) required for producing a particular product or service.

EIOLCA relies on sector‐level averages that may or may not be representative of the specific subset of the sector relevant to a particular product. To the extent that the good or service of interest is representative of a sector, EIOLCA can provide very fast estimates of full supply chain implications for that good or service.

Researchers at the Green Design Institute of Carnegie Mellon University began developing a web‐based tool for performing an EIOLCA in the 1990s. The underlying software traces out the various economic transactions, resource requirements, and environmental emissions associated with the production of a particular product or service. The model captures all the various manufacturing, transportation, mining, and related requirements to produce a product or service. For example, one might wish to trace out the implications of purchasing $46 000 of reinforcing steel and $104 000 of concrete for a kilometer of roadway pavement. Environmental implications of these purchases can be estimated using EIOLCA. The current (2002) model is based upon the Department of Commerce's 428 sector industry input–output model of the US economy.

In 2018, VitalMetrics Group, an environmental consultancy, developed a web‐based Spend Analysis Tool for quantifying the environmental impacts associated with an organization's entire upstream supply chain. It is compliant with the approach for quantifying spend‐based impacts defined in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Chain Accounting and Reporting Standard. The tool utilizes the Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA), a peer‐reviewed EIOLCA database with a base year of 2014. CEDA represents 389 industrial sectors, the commodities and the linkages between them, and over 2700 environmental exchanges arising from them, including extraction of various natural resources, water consumption, land use, and emissions to air, water, and soil.