Environmental sustainable decision making– The need and obstacles for integration of LCA into decision analysis

Dong, Yan; Miraglia, Simona; Manzo, Stefano; Georgiadis, Stylianos; Sørup, Hjalte Jomo Danielsen; Boriani, Elena; Hald, Tine; Thöns, Sebastian; Hauschild, Michael Zwicky

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2018.05.018

Cited by 52 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…As recognized by Nesticò and Maselli [36], it is important to provide decision makers with a complete profile of knowledge of the effects, both financial and extra-financial, that projects (or products) are expected to produce. However, environmental impacts are not always among the prioritized concerns of traditional decision making [37]. Life Cycle Assessment has been extensively used to get a comprehensive environmental profile of a product or service through the quantification of an extensive set of impact categories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Analysis of a Game-Based Solution for Domestic Energy Saving

et al. 2020

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ICT-based solutions are seen to be almost totally environmentally friendly, but game-based solutions for energy saving have not been explored yet. This paper describes a comprehensive analysis and an in-depth interpretation of the life cycle environmental impact of a game-based solution for domestic energy saving, developed and validated within the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project EnerGAware—Energy Game for Awareness of energy efficiency in social housing communities. Life cycle impacts were calculated with SimaPRO 8.5.2.0 using the ReCiPe 2016 v1.02 midpoint and endpoint methods and information contained within the Ecoinvent v3.4 database. Although the pre-competitive solution, directly arising from the research project, was found to have a relatively high environmental impact, its future exploitation, which mostly relies on existing infrastructure, was found to be highly competitive from an environmental perspective. The game will help reduce the life cycle impact of domestic energy consumption on damage to human health (3.68%), ecosystem quality (3.87%), and resource availability (4.81%). Most of the environmental impact of the market solution was found in the manufacturing phase (77.96–80.12%). Transport (8.86–7.57%), use (3.86–5.82%), and maintenance (7.24–7.54%) phases were found to contribute little to environmental impact. This research provides a useful reference for decision-making as it contributes to the environmental benchmarking of competing energy-saving strategies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Analysis of a Game-Based Solution for Domestic Energy Saving

et al. 2020

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“…However, it does not comply with the requirements if a selection is made on site-specific performances of suppliers. In a recent study, Dong et al (2018) analyze the generic application of LCA in decision analysis and identify LCA as a generally suitability approach to integrate environmental impacts. However, they point out several aspects, such as variations in scope, methodological differences and varying system boundaries as challenges which need to be overcome at first.…”

Section: Life Cycle Assessment In Supplier Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating site-specific environmental impact assessment in supplier selection: exemplary application to steel procurement

et al. 2020

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In times of fast-growing stakeholder interest in sustainability, the ecological and social perspective of industrial companies and its products is gaining increasing importance. In particular, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the automotive industry has come to the forefront of public and governmental attention. The transport sector accounts for 27% of all European GHG emissions and constitutes the largest emitter of CO 2 e (CO 2 equivalents) among all energy demanding technologies. Due to increasingly efficient combustion engines and technology innovation towards e-mobility, the emissions from car manufacturing gain in importance. So far little focus has been laid upon the emissions created throughout the production process in automotive supply chains from a purchasing perspective. The purchasing of raw material from environmentally efficient suppliers can constitute a possibility to significantly reduce CO 2 e emissions in automotive supply chains and thus contribute to the two degrees global warming goal. Supplier selection decisions, which cover approximately 75% of the value adding process of a car, are today mainly cost and quality-driven. In order to integrate CO 2 e as decision criterion for supplier selections, site-specific and comparable data on CO 2 e emissions from the upstream supply chain is necessary, but currently lacking. To estimate CO 2 e emissions of steel suppliers' production sites, a model has been developed to estimate manufacturing processes on a site-specific level without the necessity of confidential primary data. The model is applied on 22 integrated steel mills in EU-15. The results, which can be transferred and used for various products and industries, e.g. the construction industry, demonstrate the partially large disparities of manufacturing efficiency regarding CO 2 e emissions among steel manufacturers due to different levels of process integration and internal process know-how. A range between 1879 and 2990 (kg CO 2 e/t crude steel) has been revealed. Finally, the estimated data on CO 2 e performance of suppliers is applied in a case study of supplier selection of a German automobile manufacturer in order to simulate environmental as well as economic effects. A. Schiessl et al.

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“…The interest for sustainability-based decisions increased substantially after 2006 and now there are more than 26 thousands documents which are related to both the sustainability and decision-making subject areas. However, in a 2018 study, Dong et al highlighted that environmental impacts are still scarcely considered in decision-making [14]. On such accounts, it can be remarked that both aspects (resilience and sustainability) play a key role in strategic decision-making.…”

Section: Resilient and Sustainable Decision-makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Literature Review of the Concepts of Resilience and Sustainability in Group Decision-Making

Ardebili

Padoano

2020

Sustainability

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The most critical decisions usually involve several decision makers with different roles and opportunities to commit key resources. Several group decision-making (GDM) approaches can support the identification of a joint or compromise decision in less conflicting settings, where there is a group of subjects (e.g’, partners) who pursue a common overall objective. However, considering the uncertainty in future events and complexity of modern-day systems, decision processes do not always produce beneficial results or give the participants a positive perception of their role in the process. Group decision-making should then take into consideration some aspects that might insure future resilience and sustainability, particularly the achievement of the objectives in view of future risks and the transparency and participation that are needed to limit problems in the implementation phase of the decision. The literature survey presented in this study identified a research gap regarding GDM. Differently from traditional GDM, which was first discussed in the early 1980s and whose body of knowledge is pretty defined, resilient and sustainable GDM (R&S GDM) is fairly new. The main objective of this study is then identifying the main attributes for supporting sustainable and resilient group decisions. To this aim, a preliminary focused systematic review was conducted to study the existing group decision-making methods in the literature and how the concepts of sustainability and resilience have been employed. After defining the search keywords and exclusion criteria for the individuation of the articles, the first screening process was carried out and the most relevant articles were selected. The last steps of the systematic review were the classification of the articles and the full paper examination to extract the main factors of R&S GDM. Seven attributes were listed as the key factors of R&S GDM. In light of those factors, a group decision process concerning an injection moulding line in Tajikistan was investigated. The case study highlighted that over self-confidence, information flow and transparency were the main reasons for faulty decisions, thus suggesting that information system and information fluidity play an important role in R&S GDM. Finally, the most important managerial implications of R&S GDM are reported.

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Environmental sustainable decision making– The need and obstacles for integration of LCA into decision analysis

Cited by 52 publications

References 84 publications

Life Cycle Analysis of a Game-Based Solution for Domestic Energy Saving

Life Cycle Analysis of a Game-Based Solution for Domestic Energy Saving

Integrating site-specific environmental impact assessment in supplier selection: exemplary application to steel procurement

A Literature Review of the Concepts of Resilience and Sustainability in Group Decision-Making

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