Magnus Blinge

Life cycle assessment of the road transport sector

The road transport sector has been studied with a life-cycle perspective. Transport activities and products used for road transportation have been analysed in order to identify those with significant contribution to the total environmental impact. Detailed data on the environmental burdens caused by different transportation activities such as fuel production, fuel combustion at driving, maintenance of the vehicle and production and after use treatment of the vehicle have been collected and transformed into a form usable in life cycle assessment (LCA). A comprehensive and flexible system model for description of road transportation systems has been developed. A software program, KRABAT, has been developed from the system model. The program has been used for calculation of the environmental burdens of road transportation. The use of non-renewable energy is sometimes used as an indicator of the environmental impact of activities. In this study the consumption of non-renewable fuels, electricity and air emissions have been considered. The production, maintenance and after use treatment of the vehicle have shown to contribute significantly to the total environmental impact of road transportation, measured per vehicle kilometer. This is especially valid for passenger cars, for which the amount of fossile fuel used for production of the vehicle is about 10% of the total amount used during the whole life time of the car. This share is generally much smaller for trucks, since they are used more frequently than passenger cars. The treatment of the different materials of the car after use is of importance for the possibilities of minimization of the environmental impact from road transport. In a case study, the environmental burdens from all processes and transports in the life cycle of newspapers have been analysed. Two after use treatment scenarios were studied, one with 70% recycling and the other with 100% incineration with heat recovery. The total contribution of environmental burdens from transportation to the total of the whole life cycle were studied. It could not be concluded that transportation increased with a higher degree of recycling. This holds true for our assumptions. The result may however be different for other geographical conditions, population densities, etc.

Air emissions from the fuel supply system of a Swedish CHP plant and the effects of stricter emission regulations

The purpose of this work was to quantify the energy use and production of air emissions by supply systems for different biofuels used in a typical Swedish combined heat and power plant. In addition, the effects of the future reductions in the total amounts of exhaust gas emissions, as a result of stricter emission regulations for transport and off-road equipment, were studied. A model was developed and used for the calculations. Input data were collected from a plant situated some 100 km from Stockholm in Sweden. Biofuels used by the plant include chips from limbs and tops, by-products from sawmills and chips from willow energy plantations. The results show that residues from sawmills are very favourable in terms of the studied environmental parameters. Air emissions from limbs and tops is 5-8 times greater than that from sawmills. The use of a terminal for temporary storage means that additional transport and loading operations are necessary which result in a 30% increase in air emissions. The most important effects of the stricter emission regulations are that emissions of nitrous oxides (NOx) caused by the supply system will decrease by up to 70% within 10 years and that the unburned hydrocarbon (HC) emissions will decrease by 30-35%.

Sustainable logistics and supply chain management: A holistic view through the lens of the wicked problem

This study takes a holistic perspective of sustainable logistics and supply chain management (SLSCM), exploring the interdependencies among sustainability, financial strength and customer performance in logistics and supply chain management. Firms often struggle to understand when sustainable performance is improving and most importantly, what it costs them in terms of financial and customer performance. The theoretical lens of the wicked problem provides a framework to understand why sustainability performance shows mixed results. Hypotheses that investigate aggregate-level links between sustainable practices of global companies are tested with regression analysis and firm-level data from three widely used databases. Efforts to improve SLSCM can have a positive impact on performance; however, it comes at a price. For example, we find that firms that achieve the highest sustainability recognition have a lower return on assets (ROA) and that a leadership position in sustainability performance requires resources and a long-term view of return on investment.