Many different approaches have been developed to quantify and evaluate sustainability. Here a review is performed on sustainability assessment based on Life Cycle Thinking, which mostly means Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). Until the end of 2018, 258 publications can be found, from which 146 include a case study. The highest number of publications appeared between 2016 and 2018 and, compared to the years before 2016, the number of authors has increased. However, in recent years the focus has been more on case studies than on methodological aspects of LCSA. The presented holistic approaches for LCSA are either too broad or too narrow for scientific guidance. Therefore, many questions concerning LCSA are still open, e.g., regarding definition of sustainability dimensions and the desire or need for multi-criteria decision-analysis. An underlying problem is the lack of discussion about sustainability concepts. The momentum in the community to perform case studies for LCSA should be used to also develop more guiding principles.
Social impacts of novel technology can, parallel to environmental and economic consequences, influence its sustainability. By analyzing the case of hydrogen production by advanced alkaline water electrolysis (AEL) from a life cycle perspective, this paper illustrates the social implications of the manufacturing of the electrolyzer and hydrogen production when installed in Germany, Austria, and Spain. This paper complements previous environmental and economic assessments, which selected this set of countries based on their different structures in electricity production. The paper uses a mixed method design to analyze the social impact for the workers along the process chain. Appropriate indicators related to working conditions are selected on the basis of the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The focus on workers is chosen as a first example to test the relatively new Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment (PSILCA) database version 2.0. The results of the quantitative assessment are then complemented and compared through an investigation of the underlying raw data and a qualitative literature analysis. Overall, advanced AEL is found to have least social impact along the German process chain, followed by the Spanish and the Austrian. All three process chains show impacts on global upstream processes. In order to reduce social impact and ultimately contribute to Sustainable Development, policymakers and industry need to work together to further improve certain aspects of working conditions in different locations, particularly within global upstream processes.
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