Making Sustainability Analysis More Accessible to Decision Makers

Transcription

1 Making Sustainability Analysis More Accessible to Decision Makers Craig Cammarata, MPP, MS Sustainable Systems David Lengacher, MBA, MSIE Shannon Lloyd, PhD Engineering and Public Policy E2S2 Symposium, New Orleans 24 May 2012

2 Background and Problem Statement There are increasing legal, regulatory, and policy pressures to make defense systems and operations more sustainable. Examples include: Internal DoD SSPP and CrVI DFARS rule Federal EO13423, EO 13514, and EISA07 International REACH and RoHoS Decision makers are continually facing difficult tradeoffs across financial, environmental and human health indicators Source: Kermit the Frog, The Jim Henson Company

3 Application of Concepts Detailed in Presentation The concepts that will be presented have been generalized across a wide portfolio of projects and can be applied to, although not limited to, the following applications: Acquisition and procurement Installation development and management Logistics and resource consumption End-of-life Management

4 What Does Sustainability Really Mean? It depends on the application and who you ask: Brundtland Commission: [meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. EPA: making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment. DoD SSPP: to create and maintain conditions, under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans. But there is a common trend across all definitions

5 The Math Behind Sustainability Sustainability = Comprehensive Performance Comprehensive Performance = f(effectiveness, efficiency) How effectively can I generate value and meet goals? How efficiently can I utilize resources to achieve that effectiveness? Maximize overall value and goal achievement, subject to: Resource constraints (budget, material limitations, etc.) Political and social constraints Low impacts on human health and the environmental

6 How to Characterize and Compare Impacts? There are many tools for characterizing and comparing impacts, but these tools answer different questions. Examples include: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) traditionally compares products and processes across multiple indicators according to negative environmental and human health impacts that occur throughout the life cycle. Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) compares products and processes according to the total costs incurred throughout the life cycle. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) quantifies, in terms of inventory, the flows and stocks of materials that pass through a defined system (organization, economy, etc.). Footprint Analysis quantifies the amount of embodied resource used (i.e., energy) or output produced (i.e., GHG) for a specified product, entity, or process. Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) a discipline of methodologies aimed at selecting alternatives across multiple, and typically conflicting, criteria.

7 Common Problems All sustainability tools suffer from one or more of the following problems: They are often resource (money, labor, time) intensive to conduct. They rely on robust data sets that are often difficult to collect, incomplete, outdated, or do not exist. They are hindered by uncertainty and/or subjectivity. They often cannot inform policy decisions because either the analysis takes too long or the results are difficult to interpret.

8 Example Tool: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) LCA is a cradle-to-grave approach for assessing the impact of systems; it quantifies a system s inputs and outputs, and translates those inputs and outputs into environmental and human health impacts (ISO 14040). Product or Process System

9 Comparing Alternatives Using LCA LCAs are used to compare systems with the same function Which alternative is more sustainable? Impact Potential *Results generated from use of SimaPro Software tool using Ecoinvent data

10 Problems Associated with LCA Two reasons why LCAs are not commonly used by decision makers: 1. Data collection is resource intensive because all inputs and outputs must be quantified. This requires a large dataset. Even the most simple systems can comprise thousands of inputs and outputs, and it is often difficult to quantify some inputs and outputs. 2. Methods used to derive a single score in traditional LCA rely heavily on subjective normalization and a priori weighting (e.g., MCDA) schemes. Weighting and normalization is needed to index impact metrics that have different units and are incomparable.

11 Addressing LCA Problem 1 Problem 1: LCAs are resource intensive Solution, Part 1: Focus data collection and modeling efforts on the most important processes Using LCA models as an example, on average 40% of impacts can be captured by models focusing just on the 5-20 most important processes/activities comprising a system (Norris, 2002). Takeaway: Collect data for the processes that cause the greatest impact and use default data to fill in the gaps.

12 Addressing LCA Problem 1 Problem 1: LCAs are resource intensive Solution, Part 2: Streamlined LCA (SLCA) [A] simplified variety of detailed LCA conducted according to guidelines not in full compliance with the ISO standards and representative of studies typically requiring from 1 to 20 person-days of work (Guinée et al. 2001) Not as robust as ISO 14040, but identifies the most important contributors. Can be used to fill in data gaps when default data does not exist or be used as a stand-alone analysis when resources are very limited.

13 Example Use of SLCA OSD AT&L is developing a SLCA method for efficiently selecting the most sustainable conceptual or design alternatives during acquisition. Step 1: Develop a life cycle activity profile for the system of interest to inform data collection and modeling efforts Active vs. Passive Active consumes resources during use phase Passive does not consume resources during use phase Mobile vs. Stationary Mobile is either mobilized on its own accord (active) or mobilized by support equipment (passive) Stationary = does not move and probably does not need support equipment

14 Example Use of SLCA Step 2: Choose appropriate metrics Example Metrics Attributes Energy Chemicals and Materials Water Land Sustainability Metrics System Energy Consumption Sub-Attributes Support and Sustainment Energy Consumption Renewable Energy Use Source Reliability Mass Used & Recovery Potential Use of Hazardous Chemicals and Materials Chemicals and Materials Availability System Water Use Support and Sustainment Use Fit-for-Use (Matching Source Quality with Required Quality) Water Degradation Water Scarcity Incremental Land Use Land Degradation

15 Example Use of SLCA Step 3: Assign a score to each applicable metric using best available data/information. Example Qualitative Scoring for Fit-for-Use Water Metric Score of 2 best Examples include: Legacy Data Estimated Ranges Qualitative scale Ordinal ranking worst Scale: 0 = ultra pure; 11 = untreated radioactive waste water

16 Addressing LCA Problem 2 Problem 2: Methods used to derive a single score in traditional LCA rely heavily on subjective normalization and a priori weighting (e.g., MCDA) schemes. Solution 1: Managing subjectivity by helping decision makers better understand tradeoffs Example: This spider diagram is used to develop a system footprint, which is based on input/output data and reduces the need to translate this data into impact metrics. Still subjective but does not require preliminary weighting scheme Decisions made after results

17 Addressing LCA Problem 2 Problem 2: Methods used to derive a single score in traditional LCA rely heavily on subjective normalization and a priori weighting (e.g., MCDA) schemes. Solution 2: Reduce Subjectivity by utilizing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) An operations research and economics methodology that assigns relative performance scores to systems that utilize multiple inputs to create multiple outputs. The highest performing systems form a frontier of best performing systems from which lower performing systems can be compared. Can be used to compare alternatives across typically incomparable metrics (e.g., impacts) without subjective weighting. This eliminates the need to reach consensus on weights, which is difficult and time consuming. Since sustainability is a measure of performance, this methodology can tell you which alternative is most sustainable (rank) and how much more sustainable (magnitude).

18 DEA in Sustainability Applications We ve developed FASST to: Rank alternatives according to performance without incorporating subjective weights and normalization Supplement optimization techniques to develop an optimal portfolio of projects or solutions aimed at achieving the most sustainable solution, given resource constraints Calculate the marginal cost of sustainability How much will incremental improvement cost?

19 Utilizing FASST to Rank Alternatives

20 Utilizing FASST to Prioritize and Build Optimal Portfolios

21 Utilizing FASST to Track Goal Achievement

22 Utilizing FASST to Optimize Budget and Schedule

23 Summary Sustainability analysis can be more accessible to decision makers by: 1. Utilizing streamlined LCA to provide sufficient results at a fraction of the time and money needed for a traditional ISO LCA. 2. Managing subjectivity by reducing the need to use a priori weighting schemes through data visualization (e.g., spider diagram). 3. Eliminating the need for subjective weighting and normalization schemes by utilizing tools such as FASST. These concepts can be applied to other sustainability tools, methodologies, and applications.

24 Contact Information Craig Cammarata Senior Life Cycle Analyst Concurrent Technologies Corporation (703) David Lengacher Principle Operations Research Analyst Concurrent Technologies Corporation (202) Shannon Lloyd Advisor Engineer Concurrent Technologies Corporation (814)