Electronic invoicing is a current alternative to traditional invoices distributed on paper.There are reasons to believe that electronic invoicing is environmentally preferable totraditional invoicing, as the production of paper and envelopes, the printing process andthe physical distribution can be avoided. However, there are additional needs for servers,etc. when electronic invoices are used. To assess the environmental performance of aproduct or a service or to compare two alternative ways of providing a service, a life cycleperspective should preferably be used.

The study presented here is a screening life cycle assessment (LCA) aimed at assessingthe consequences of a complete transition from all paper invoicing to all electronicinvoicing in Sweden. Readily accessible data were used and the focus was on cumulativeenergy demand and emissions of greenhouse gases. The main purpose of the study wasto increase our knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages of such a transition.An additional aim was to identify areas with a lack of data and major uncertainties.

In an LCA, environmental impacts are related to the function provided by the product orservice studied. The function provided by invoices is to distribute information aboutpayment obligations from supplier to customer. This may be business-to business (B-to-B) or business-to-consumer (B-to-C).

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