Enabling Circular Life-cycle Thinking and Measuring of Sustainability From an Industrial Ecologists Perspective
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Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Design for sustainable development, MSc
Publicerad
2021
Författare
Byström, Fredrik
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
Assessing the sustainability of an automotive component can be complex because sustainability
aspects need to be balanced against each other. In order to allow the automotive
industry to make wise decisions, the industry needs efficient tools which users with little
sustainability knowledge can apply to make sustainable decisions in an early concept
phase. This thesis researches how such a tool could be constructed and applied to increase
the quality of sustainability decisions while expanding circular life-cycle thinking.
This thesis applies the knowledge and conclusions from recent life-cycle assessments of
electric machines to build a sustainability calculation tool for the Propulsion department
at Volvo Cars. The environmental priority strategy methodology was selected to calculate
monetary values for environmental impacts from producing electric machines. One of the
results from this thesis is the tool that incorporates the earlier mentioned aspects to create
an understanding of circular life-cycle thinking and how efficient end-of-life processes can
affect the sustainability of a component. The second result consists of outputs from the
tool, which are compared and analyzed to determine the tool’s accuracy. The complexity
of the tool was also checked by having users draw conclusions of tool outputs and comparing
those to the researcher’s conclusions. The main takeaways from the tool development
process are that the tool needed to be very clear and easy to understand. Something
evident to the researcher may not be evident to the designers and vice versa.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
life-cycle thinking , circular economy , life-cycle assessment , electric machines , electric motors , resource efficiency , sustainability tool , environmental priority strategy , climate change , eco-design , resource life-extending strategies , sustainable development , industrial ecology