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 CO2e (CO2 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 CO2e 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 CO2e as decision criterion for supplier selections, site-specific and comparable data on CO2e emissions from the upstream supply chain is necessary, but currently lacking. To estimate CO2e 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 CO2e emissions among steel manufacturers due to different levels of process integration and internal process know-how. A range between 1879 and 2990 (kg CO2e/t crude steel) has been revealed. Finally, the estimated data on CO2e 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.

Risk management in Supply Chains has gained increasing attention over the last years. At the same time the pressure to consider social issues in global and interconnected supply chains has risen as well. These issues pose risk to supply chains since their occurrence may cause adverse stakeholder reaction through e.g. reputational losses. Despite the growing importance of supplier management as a key process within supply chains and the frequently articulated demand for a quantitative assessment of associated risks, such approaches are missing so far. Thus, the aim of this paper is to develop a model to efficiently estimate and assess social risks along global supply chains. For this purpose, Leontief’s Input Output model is combined with country risks and sector specific labour intensities. In addition, a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used to weigh the various considered social risks. Thereby the focus is on the upstream supply chain of actors in a supply chain. The approach is developed generally, opening the possibility of adaption to different types of input-output data bases and using different social risks discussed in social life cycle assessment. The fuzzy analytical hierarchy process facilitates the operational application in companies, where different people with differing preferences are involved, e.g. in procurement decisions. The model is applied to a case study of a German premium car manufacturer to demonstrate and validate the approach. It is shown, how – based on the developed model – the assessment of supply chains risks can be carried out. The approach allows an assessment of the supply chain as a whole, i.e. considering all upstream tiers, and of specific tiers. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis with regard to the obtained weights is conducted to verify the final aggregative risk values. The results show that there are huge differences in the social risks associated with different suppliers as well as different risk structures along the n-tier chain. This helps prioritizing any projects with the aim to improve the living and working conditions. In summary the model has a great benefit for practitioners in purchasing functions of focal companies and can be a helpful tool to support the efficient handling of social issues along supply chains. At the same time, its academic contributions lie in extending the life cycle sustainability analysis through a (multi-regional) socially extended input output model (SEIO) for social risk assessment in sustainable supply chain management.

German metal producers face an intense international competition. The comparably high domestic energy and production costs additionally challenge the producers. Beside this, German energy intensive industries (GEII) are embedded in a complex regulatory framework induced by energy and climate policies. These policies consist of different economic political instruments which are regularly changed to incentivize greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. Therefore, future investment decisions in energy efficiency increasing technologies (EEIT) have to be evaluated dependent on these changing political conditions. Thus, actors in the metal industry need decision support in developing sustainable investment strategies which withstand different political developments. Given these circumstances, we develop an actor-oriented simulation model which simulates the optimal future investment decisions of all German iron, steel and aluminum producing plants under different political conditions based on a detailed plant-specific technical process description. Thereby, economic and engineering parameters are combined in an interdisciplinary approach to derive future investment strategies for the metal producing plants facing probable political changes. This approach closes the scientific gap between top-down oriented studies which usually are not capable of representing detailed plant-specific aspects and solely technical oriented studies which are often limited to a single plant or facility.

Co-firing of biomass in coal-fired power plants is considered one of the most economic ways of carbon dioxide abatement. We investigate the deployment and relocation of several semi-mobile processing facilities in order to supply a large coal-fired power plant with high-quality renewable energy carriers. Semi-mobile facilities are characterized by a containerized design and can be relocated in case of changes in supply and demand. The energy carriers which are produced by different types of semi-mobile technologies are bulky goods with high density and properties comparable to those of coal and fuel oil. Thus, intermodal transportation is required to achieve transportation costs which are competitive with the delivered cost of fossil fuels at the plant's gate. The optimization of the investigated supply chain therefore requires simultaneous planning of semi-mobile facility deployment and intermodal transportation. To this end, we present a mixed-integer linear problem which optimizes the number of semi-mobile facilities, their respective relocation over time and the intermodal transportation of produced energy carriers to the power plant. In the presented case, train transportation is characterized by a low geographical coverage of the railway network and restrictions representing minimum shipping volumes per railway line. The model minimizes the objective function of total supply chain costs including electricity generation, transportation, the operation and relocation of the semi-mobile plants and the necessary forestry operations associated with the deployed facilities. The model is implemented in GAMS and solved using the CPLEX solver. We discuss a numerical example based on data from the forestry and energy sector in Chile.

In current discussions about air pollution, CO2 and other important greenhouse gases are usually the primarily regarded pollutants. Nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions, however, seem to be a subject of the late 20th century that has been “resolved” in most parts of the world. Yet, NOX emissions are still doing severe harm to humans and the environment in many parts of the world, for example by enforcing the formation of ground-level ozone, especially during the summer months. Succeeding the transportation sector, the energy sector is causing the second largest share of worldwide NOX emissions. Especially in developing countries, NOX emission abatement in fossil fueled power plants seems to be barely regarded, as the main focus is usually set on economic efficiency and the fulfilling of increasing demands. We compiled the NOX emission regulation legislation for the energy sector of 59 countries worldwide considering policy instruments and emission limits for two exemplary installations of the energy sector. Various political instruments exist to target NOX emission regulation, such as emission and immission limitations, technical specifications, market price based instruments (cap-and-trade or green certificate schemes), financial support programs and specific taxes. The various instruments and the political background of their implementation can have differing influences on the total emissions of a country which is investigated qualitatively in a comparative SWOT analysis taking the two most common instruments – emission and immission limits – into account. Apart from a qualitative comparison of these instruments, the impact of emission limits on national NOX emissions is also part of our study. It will be investigated quantitatively based on the example of the development of NOX emissions within the European Union since 1990. Our results show that based on publicly available data, a quantitative comparison of different policy instruments throughout the world is difficult. Yet we expect that the chosen kind of instrument is less important than its proper implementation and management in order to minimize NOX emissions of the energy sector. Our analyses are of special interest for political stakeholders which decide on future political instruments or have to comply with them, especially but not only in developing countries.

Drawing from a variety of literature sources, the present paper explores the conditions for social acceptance of biogas supply chains from an interdisciplinary perspective by integrating technical and societal aspects. It aims at identifying acceptance relevant parameters of biogas plants which exert an impact on local communities and residents living in the immediate vicinity of biogas plants. Relevant parameters include substrate type, transport and logistics, storage of feedstocks, plant size and location, odor and noise emissions, and commercialization of end products. In conclusion, recommendations for project owners to promote social acceptance of biogas supply chains are developed.

Fossil fuels will continue to be the most important energy source for electricity generation in most parts of the world for the next decades. Therefore emission abatement technologies in large combustion plants are an important measure to reduce the emission of pollutants and to lower the negative effects thereof for humans, animals and the environment. Investment decisions for emission reduction measures are, however, facing various kinds of risks and uncertainties, caused by political, technological, economic and legal influences. The consideration of these risks in early stage investment planning is often complex yet important for investors. This paper investigates the possibilities to consider risks and uncertainties in early stage investment and cost calculation methodologies of different complexity. The real options analysis is presented as well as less complex methods, such as Monte-Carlo or sensitivity analyses that lower the calculation effort. The application of a specifically developed risk portfolio is recommended before quantitatively investigating risks. This portfolio helps to identify the most critical risks and to focus on them, reducing again the calculation effort. The presented approach is not only of interest for investors, but also for policies, especially if data is scarce or uncertainties exist regarding specific plant parameters or cost and price components. The content of this paper is presented using the example of nitrogen oxide emission reduction measures. It is, however, possible, to transfer the results to other pollutants or technologies in a related context.

Metal production is responsible for a large part of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Germany. While some political stakeholders call for a more restrictive climate policy to force further reductions of GHG emissions, the exceptions made for the metal industry increased so far to guarantee its global competitiveness. The question rises how a more restrictive climate policy would affect industrial GHG emissions and the profitability. To estimate the impact of political instruments the actor-oriented approach presented focuses on the simulation of plant-specific investment decisions. First, a detailed database of the internal material and energy flows of all relevant iron, steel and aluminium producing plants together with the best available techniques (BAT) for GHG emission reduction is developed. In the subsequent simulation, the plants, modelled as actors, decide on the implementation of these techniques dependent on the political conditions which are varied in scenarios. The results show, that there are only minor GHG emission reduction potentials due to already implemented high efficiency standards. Nevertheless, more restrictive climate policies can lead to significant cost increases influencing global competitiveness.

Auf internationaler Ebene wurden Ziele zur Minderung von Luftschadstoff- und klimarelevanten Emissionen vereinbart, deren Umsetzung den jeweiligen Unterzeichnerstaaten obliegt. Hierzu existieren zahlreiche umweltpolitische Instrumente, deren Effektivitat und Effizienz jedoch schwer abschatzbar sind. Daher ist es das Anliegen des im vorliegenden Buch beschriebenen otello-Modellsystems, solche politischen Instrumente in ihren okologischen und okonomischen Wirkungsmechanismen zu bewerten. Umfang: XIV, 514 S. Preis: €61.00 | £56.00 | $107.00