Sustainable development model for measuring and managing sustainability in the automotive sector

A growing number of organizations across a variety of industries are now pursuing sustainable management business goals to improve business efficiency, manage stakeholder expectations, or for legislative compliance. This is also the case for automotive manufacturing organizations who are under pressure from their stakeholders to manage and improve sustainability performance. This requires the development of credible measurement tools and systems to enable capture and monitoring of sustainability. This paper describes the development process for an innovative model, named the Automotive Sustainability Assessment Model (A-SAM), to drive sustainable decision-making in the automotive sector. The process of developing the model consisted of four major steps, each of which contained series of intermediate steps, individual objectives, and research methods. The model measures, quantifies, and translates a broad range of external effects (both positive and negative) into their monetary equivalents, enabling large car manufacturers to evaluate options, identify win–wins, and optimize trade-off, while making complex and multidisciplinary sustainability decisions. It allows managers and design engineers in the automotive sector to develop a better understanding of the environmental, resource, and social impacts of their activities, products, processes, and materials used, while still ensuring cost-effectiveness when making decisions. The A-SAM shows promise as an effective tool for supporting sustainability decisions in a business environment. Although developed in the context of the automotive industry, it can be adapted by organizations of any type, operating across many different sectors for managing sustainability in a more holistic, comprehensive, and integrated manner

The life cycle impact for platinum group metals and lithium to 2070 via surplus cost potential

© 2017 The Author(s)Purpose: A surplus cost potential (SCP) indicator has been developed as a measure of resource scarcity in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) context. To date, quality SCP estimates for other minerals than fossils are either not yet available or suffer methodological and data limitations. This paper overcomes these limitations and demonstrate how SCP estimates for metals can be calculated without the utilisation of ore grade function and by collecting primary economic and geological data. Methods: Data were collected in line with the geographical distribution, mine type, deposit type and production volumes and total production costs in order to construct cost-cumulative availability curves for platinum group metals (PGMs) and lithium. These curves capture the total amount of known mineral resources that can be recovered profitably at various prices from different types of mineral deposits under current conditions (this is, current technology, prevailing labour and other input prices). They served as a basis for modelling the marginal cost increase, a necessary parameter for estimating the SCP indicator. Surplus costs were calculated for different scenario projections for future mineral production considering future market dynamics, recyclability rates, demand-side technological developments and economic growth and by applying declining social discount rate. Results and discussion: Surplus costs were calculated for three mineral production scenarios, ranging from (US$2014/kg) 6545–8354 for platinum, 3583–4573 for palladium, 8281–10,569 for rhodium, 513–655 for ruthenium, 3201–4086 for iridium and 1.70–5.80 for lithium. Compared with the current production costs, the results indicate that problematic price increases of lithium are unlikely if the latest technological trends in the automotive sector will continue up to 2070. Surplus costs for PGMs are approximately one-third of the current production costs in all scenarios; hence, a threat of their price increases by 2070 will largely depend on the discovery of new deposits and the ability of new technologies to push these costs down over time. This also applies to lithium if the increasing electrification of road transport will continue up to 2070. Conclusions: This study provides useful insight into the availability of PGMs and lithium up to 2070. It proves that if time and resources permit, reliable surplus cost estimates can be calculated, at least in the short-run, based on the construction of one’s own curves with the level of quality comparable to expert-driven consulting services. Modelling and incorporating unknown deposits and potential future mineral production costs into these curves is the subject of future work

Metodyka transformacji wyników badań naukowych do zastosowań praktycznych

Głównym celem niniejszego opracowania jest prezentacja metodyki transformacji (transferu) wyników badań naukowych do praktyki. Metodyka zawiera takie zagadnienia jak: podstawy teoretyczno-metodyczne wspomagania procesów transformacji wyników badań naukowych do zastosowań praktycznych, stan doświadczeń (metodycznych i praktycznych) w procesach transformacji, czynniki sprzyjające i niesprzyjające procesom transformacji, procedury wspomagania metodycznego procesu transformacji, propozycje kierunków dalszych badań