ECO-SYS
- Prepared by:
- Randall D. Watkins/Ted Wheelis
- Prepared for:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)
- Application:
| Financial analysis: |
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| Environmental impact analysis: |
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| Waste management/P2: |
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| Environmental cost listing/database: |
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| Cost estimation: |
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| Alternative product/process comparison: |
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- SNL is involved in the development of an information and expert system called EcoSys that performs impact analyses of product design and manufacturing processes. This program will help process and product engineers assess the environmental consequences of their decisions. The software can provide decision support in a number of areas including comparative process and product assessments, process optimization, and environmental needs assessments.
- Development/publication date and updates:
- Version 1 of EcoSys was released in October, 1993. Version 2 was released in 1994. Various papers are being written focusing on the EcoSys software development.
- Public availability:
- Available
- Purpose and current use:
- In March, 1983, SNL brought out a document called "IMDIECM Life-Cycle Costs Part I. Environmental Impact Metrics Definition, Stakeholder Survey and Panel Review." This document was prepared as part of an SNL program, Integrated Manufacturing and Design Initiative (IMDI). In the study, the panel developed an IMDI Environmental Impacts Model that builds on earlier SETAC work. The panel discussed the possibility of using Colby's (1990) five environmental management paradigms as a basis for assigning weights to environmental impacts. This exercise has since led to the development ECO-SYS. The software is being used in some private companies, primarily with the objective of evaluating the software and providing feed-back to SNL.
- Cost information:
- EcoSys is currently available free of charge. DOE may consider commercializing the software at a later date.
- Contents and system requirements:
- The Eco-sys software operates on a Sun workstation, using X-Windows. Users can remotely access the system using their PCs, Macs, or other SPARC stations.
Summary of methodology
The environmental modeling in ECO-SYS employs principles of life-cycle analysis as defined by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) and the USEPA. The approach is structured around the life-cycle inventory. The system includes environmental impact decision models that are based on the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The goals of EcoSys are identified as the following.
- identify and quantify the relationships between product design, material consumption, and waste generation, within a manufacturing process.
- apply these relationships to compare environmental consequences of competing product designs and processes.
There are three databases in the system. The first contains process knowledge, which assists users in building a tree (product/process hierarchy) that incorporates process and material information. Alternate processes can be built-in from this point. Ideally, the bottom level of the hierarchy should contain the most basic constituent sets of processes and materials.
The second database contains information that links material information to environmental impacts. Thus, processes can be defined by their environmental impacts. An in-built materials library assigns values to each of the environmental attributes for a set of selected materials. This takes to account the quantities into a process, and quantities out of a process. Currently, theEcoSys library consists of over 400 single and multi-component materials classified according to a wide variety of organic and inorganic chemical families.
Finally, the third database contains information on three different impact models. The impact models are built around three of Colby's paradigms: Environmental protection, Resource management, and Eco-development. Users can compare the different conclusions through the application of these paradigms. The models are based on the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which supports to the subjective nature of environmental impact analysis. The criteria that were selected for inclusion in these models are based on:
- Environmental risk: issues include global warming, ozone depletion, land-use, species extinction, and air and water toxics.
- Waste production: issues include quantity, percentage hazardous, disposition route, and fugitive emissions.
- Resource consumption: issues include quantity, energy, renewable materials use, and reuse.
Sub-criteria under risk that were given the maximum priority were derived from the findings reported by an EPA Science Advisory Board study[1] on risks associated with global environmental problems. Weights were assigned based upon interpretations of the three different paradigms.
Life-cycle stages covered
| Raw material acquisition |
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| Manufacturing stage |
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| Use/reuse/maintenance |
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| Recycle/waste management |
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EcoSys contains inventory information only for the manufacturing stage of the life-cycle. However, the environmental attributes were chosen in such a manner to permit the creation of a life-cycle perspective, without complete inventory data. Thus, full life-cycle inventories are considered only in a more qualitative sense.
Type of costs considered
| Conventional |
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| Potentially hidden |
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| Contingent |
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| External |
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The "costs" associated with these impacts were not evaluated.
Method of cost estimation
The IMDI report discusses a weighting method of cost estimation based on Colby's five environmental management paradigms: frontier economics; environmental protection; resource management; eco-development; deep ecology. The ECO-SYS software is built around three of these paradigms: environmental protection, resource management, and eco-development. However, no costs are estimated in ECO-SYS. Associated with each paradigm are differing philosophies of human nature relationships. The paradigms are overlapping and encompass several schools of thought. The following is a description of the possible environmental costing methodologies under each of the three paradigms considered in ECO-SYS.
Environmental Protection
- Taxpayers (public at large) pay environmental costs.
- Analytic modeling and planning methodologies include environmental impact assessment after design, optimum pollution levels, equation of WTP and compensation principles.
- Economic analysis is based on the neoclassical model of the closed economic system. Ecological benefits are difficult to quantify, so environmental management in this paradigm is treated strictly as an added cost.
Resource Management
- "Polluter" (producers and consumers) pay environmental costs.
- Analytic modeling and planning methodologies include natural capital, true (Hicksian) income, maximization of United Nations System of National Accounts, ecosystem and social health monitoring, and linkages between population, poverty, and environment.
- Economic analysis is based on an extension of neoclassical economics that incorporates all types of capital and resources-biophysical, human, infrastructural, and monetary-into calculations of national accounts, productivity, and policies for development and investment planning.
- Pollution can be considered a "negative resource" (causing natural capital degradation), rather than as an externality.
- The concern for nature stems from the fact that hurting nature is beginning to hurt economic man. Environmental expenditures are considered necessary to avoid "more" costs.
Eco-Development
- A "pollution prevention pays" concept rewards those who do not pollute. The economy is structured to reduce pollution as a throughput.
- Analytic modeling and planning methodologies include ecological economics; open-system dynamics; socio-technical and ecosystem process design; integration of social, economic, and ecological criteria for technology; and trade and capital flow based on community goals and management.
- The relationship between society and nature can be considered a "positivesum game." Human activities are organized to be synergistic with ecosystem processes and services.
- Emphasis is placed on efficient, clean, renewable energy sources, increasing environmental information, community consciousness, and experiential quality of economic activity.
- An example of the eco-development paradigm is the International Joint Commission (IJC) between U.S. and Canada, which explicitly uses a stakeholder, positive-sum approach.
Generation of financial indicators
| Net present value (NPV) |
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| Payback period |
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| Internal rate of return (IRR) |
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| Benefits cost ratio |
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| Other |
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Attributes
The EcoSys software provides a method by which impacts of different manufacturing processes and materials can actually be assessed and compared under three different paradigms. Thus, the assessment methodology goes beyond the quantification of input and output streams. EcoSys focuses on the process for performing impact analyses, the reasoning being that the impacts result from human activity (processing) rather than from the materials or products themselves.
Limitations
No impact costs are estimated. The software uses a rating system that typically assigns values of 1 for low impact, 5 for moderate impact, and 9 for high impact. This will be refined as more data on the environmental impacts becomes available. EcoSys currently contains inventory data only on the manufacturing stage of the life-cycle. As customer-supplier relationships evolve, Eco-Sys can better support detailed analyses of upstream and downstream effects. The Eco-sys software is still in the developmental stage.
- Basis for evaluation:
- The information provided here is based on information received from SNL in May, 1995.
- Contact information:
- The report and software are available through SNL. A demonstration version of the software is also available.
- Sandia National Laboratories
- Org. 6611
- Albuquerque, NM 87195-5800
- Randall Watkins
- Ted Wheelis
- 505-845-9298
- 505-844-0116 (FAX)
- EPA/SAB, 1990. Science Advisory Board, "Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and Strategies for Environmental Protection," U.S. EPA,Washington, DC, EPA SABEC 90-021.
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