41356 2017 eng 154 165 163 article Elsevier Ltd. 1 -- -- -- Evaluating innovative process technologies has become highly important within the last decades. As standard tools different Life Cycle Assessment methods have been established, which are continuously improved. While those are designed for evaluating single processes they run into difficulties when it comes to assessing environmental impacts of process innovations at macroeconomic level. In this paper we develop a multi-step evaluation framework building on multi regional inputeoutput data that allows estimating macroeconomic impacts of new process technologies, considering the network characteristics of the global economy. Our procedure is as follows: i) we measure differences in material usage of process alternatives, ii) we identify where the standard processes are located within economic networks and virtually replace those by innovative process technologies, iii) we account for changes within economic systems and evaluate impacts on emissions. Within this paper we exemplarily apply the methodology to two recently developed innovative technologies: longitudinal large diameter steel pipe welding and turning of high-temperature resistant materials. While we find the macroeconomic impacts of very specific process innovations to be small, its conclusions can significantly differ from traditional process based approaches. Furthermore, information gained from the methodology provides relevant additional insights for decision makers extending the picture gained from traditional process life cycle assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.02.062 0959-6526 1879-1786 14.09.2017 H. Ward M. Burger Y.-J. Chang P. Fürstmann S. Neugebauer A. Radebach G. Sproesser Andreas Pittner Michael Rethmeier E. Uhlmann J. Ch. Steckel eng uncontrolled Economic wide technology replacement eng uncontrolled Sustainability assessment eng uncontrolled Multi-regional inputeoutput data eng uncontrolled Life-cycle assessment eng uncontrolled Greenhouse gas mitigation eng uncontrolled Process innovations Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten Verlagsliteratur Datei im Netzwerk der BAM verfügbar ("Closed Access")