Environmental Priority Strategy

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The Environmental Priority Strategy ( EPS ) describes a method for evaluating life cycle assessments , which was first published by Bengt Steen (IVL - Swedish Environmental Research Institute) and Sven-Olof Ryding (Swedish Industry Association) in 1990.

It measures the effect of environmental effects ranging from systems produced any kind. Fundamental here is the acceptance of protected goods, the value of which is determined by society. With the so-called willingness to pay approach, these normally difficult to assess protected goods can be recorded in monetary terms with the help of market prices and the costs of sustainable use of energy and resources can be expressed.

Factual information

The EPS model is based on comprehensive emissions balances , but also on analyzes of environmental impacts. Similar to the Eco-Indicator-95 , when using the model in practice, precalculated values ​​(e.g. raw materials used that are required during manufacture per kilogram of the product to be examined) are included. The EPS model should meet the requirement of holism in order to guarantee the most complete and comprehensive analysis of the environmental impacts possible. The conception of the model , which is comparable to an accounting system , is derived from this . The aim is a parallel recording of the monetary values ​​of an environmental quality and their change.

Protected goods

Protected goods according to the EPS model are:

Action

The EPS model is used in four steps:

  1. The damage caused by the product is converted into monetary units on the basis of the above-mentioned protected assets.
  2. Determination of the environmental impact value by evaluating the standard values ​​with environmental impact points.
  3. Evaluation of the calculated environmental impact point by multiplying it by a factor that reflects the global impact of the damage.
  4. Estimation of the share of an activity in the environmental impact value.

The result represents the financially assessable damage to the product.

Valuation method

The basis for the evaluation is the “willingness to pay” approach, i. H. the willingness of an individual (or a state) to pay for one or more of the said objects of protection or their preservation. The unit of measurement is an Environmental Load Unit ELU (per kg or a comparable unit), which has a monetary value, expressed as ECU . The basic idea is that by using an ECU an environmental change in the amount of an ELU can be prevented or offset. The EPS evaluation method first assigns a value to every environmental change in order to then estimate how large the proportion of an emission, resource extraction or similar is. is in the resulting environmental change. For this purpose, the objects of protection are assigned standard values ​​obtained from the collection of empirical data on willingness to pay.

Scope and critical appreciation

The EPS model is primarily a product rating system. The approach of making goods that cannot be valued in monetary terms comparable offers some companies starting points to make their products or their manufacture more ecologically sustainable and resource-efficient. It also offers expansion potential for the integration of additional aspects (e.g. protected assets, evaluation units and basis) and was used, for example, by the car manufacturer Volvo . However, due to the sometimes complex derivation of the environmental pollution indices, the weighting of the factors, which are difficult to define and shaped by individual preferences, and the large amount of data, this model offers room for subjective influences. This partially limits the transparency of the EPS model.

literature

  • Bengt Steen: A Systematic Approach to Environmental Priority Strategies in Product Development (EPD). Version 2000 - General System Characteristics . Ed .: Chalmers University of Technology, Technical Environmental Planning (=  CPM report . No. 4 ). Center for Environmental Assessment of Products and Material Systems, Göteborg 1999.
  • Bengt Steen: A Systematic Approach to Environmental Priority Strategies in Product Development (EPD). Version 2000 - Models and Data of the Default Method . Ed .: Chalmers University of Technology, Technical Environmental Planning (=  CPM report . No. 5 ). Center for Environmental Assessment of Products and Material Systems, Göteborg 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b N. F. Nissen: Development of an ecological evaluation model for the evaluation of electronic systems . Berlin 2001, p. 53
  2. ↑ a b c E. Günther: Damage cost approach. In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Gabler Verlag, accessed July 8, 2012 .
  3. ↑ a b c B. Stahl: Method comparison and method development for solving the evaluation problem in product-related life cycle assessments . 1998, p. 34
  4. ^ A b N. F. Nissen: Development of an ecological evaluation model for the evaluation of electronic systems . Berlin 2001, p. 54
  5. ↑ B. Stahl: Method comparison and method development to solve the evaluation problem in product-related life cycle assessments . 1998, p. 35
  6. ↑ Ines Oehme, Ulrike Seebacher, Stefan Steinlechner, Andreas Windsperger: PUIS and their properties. In: Factory of the Future. Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology of the Republic of Austria, 2003, accessed on July 8, 2012 .