Direct quantification of indicators in PSILCA – An example of Social Life Cycle Assessment of fuel cell electric vehicle production
Creators: name: Springer, Sally
name: Wulf, Christina
name: Zapp, Petra
Publisher: name: Forschungzentrum Jülich
Year: 2023

description: 1th International Conference on Life Cycle Management, LCM 2023, Lille, France, 6 Sep 2023 - 8 Sep 2023
description: Even though the methodology of Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) still has many challenges that need to be addressed, it is constantly developing. For the Impact Assessment, different approaches exist, e.g., the Reference Scale Approach. Within this approach, activity variables, e.g., worker hours, are used to reflect the relative significance of a process and for aggregation. Worker hours bring along many advantages and are an established measure, but at the same time are criticized in many aspects, e.g., the lack of a correlation between the number of hours worked and the impact of a product or process. Besides that, the variable is related to working conditions and thus only to workers as a stakeholder group. Nevertheless, they are used by the established databases – the Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment database (PSILCA) and the Social Hotspot Database (SHDB). Results are expressed in the unit medium risk hours, which can be difficult to communicate, e.g., 2000 medium risk hours of fair salary. In 2021 the developers of PSILCA, GreenDelta, introduced a new impact assessment approach for their database, which uses direct quantification with raw values instead of an activity variable. Within the direct quantification approach an assessment of risk and opportunity levels does not take place anymore. This leads to a loss of guidance but offers the possibility to integrate a customized risk assessment. The results of the raw values database are expressed in their original units, e.g., 2000 USD/month of fair salary, and are thus easier to understand and to compare with benchmarks. In addition, the assessment is not dependent on data about worker hours, which is sometimes not available. The goal of this contribution is an assessment of this new direct quantification approach from GreenDelta, by presenting its opportunities and challenges in comparison to the original database using worker hours. This is done at the example of an S-LCA for the production of a fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). This new drivetrain can contribute to a successful mobility transition and thus helps to mitigate climate change. The case study comprises a cradle-to-gate scope. Germany is considered as the country of production. The impact categories to be analyzed are association and bargaining rights, fair salary, gender wage gap, trade unionism and weekly hours of work per employee.First results reveal a strong focus on the foreground system if the raw values database is used. This is due to the high dependence on the economic value, as there is no other variable to reflect the importance of a process. The magnitude of hotspots using one or the other database is the same. The style of modelling with the raw values database, e.g., the level of detail of the foreground system, has an influence on the results of the study. This analysis will be continued and expanded.