Environmental Assessment Of Technology
Investments Using The LCA Polygon Framework
Author(s)
D. A. Georgakellos
Abstract
This paper presents a novel framework to aid assessment and selection in certain
technology investments projects. Since most of the methods available for this
purpose consider factors that seem to focus almost exclusively on what creates
most net value to the buyer of a technology system, ignoring the external costs
associated with this system, the technique proposed here has been developed in
order to provide a tool for the integration of the environmental externalities in
the assessment and selection process. This tool uses the findings of Life Cycle
Assessments (LCAs) and especially the outcomes of the LCA Polygon approach
in order to consider for each possible alternative its environmental performance
together with any economic aspects, and to result into a single \“score”, i.e. the
relative external cost. This value could be used as the exclusive basis for the
comparative appraisal of the candidates, or it could be easily integrated in most
of the existing decision methods. A relevant case study is also included in the
paper to illustrate the proposed framework. It is about the assessment of an
investment concerning five different vehicle technologies. The result of this
application can be easily incorporated in almost any common decision-making
model, which intends to take into consideration the externalities of its choice.
Keywords: investment assessment, technology selection, external cost,
environmental externalities, life-cycle assessment, LCA polygon, vehicle
technologies.
1 Introduction
In general, the assessment and selection of technology investments falls into
three general classes of problems: (a) accept-reject problems require an
assessment of whether an investment is worthwhile, (b) selection of the best
Keywords
investment assessment, technology selection, external cost,
environmental externalities, life-cycle assessment, LCA polygon, vehicle
technologies.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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