The inclusion of economic and environmental factors in the ecological cumulative exergy consumption analysis of industrial processes

Abstract

Resource, economic, and environmental impacts are three major factors in the evaluation of industrial processes. All of them might imply certain contributions of ecosystems services. A comprehensive accounting of these factors is critical to sustainability assessment of industrial activities at the ecological scale. Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ECEC) analysis is a promising approach to address these issues. However, the current knowledge on ECEC is incomplete, especially in economic investment and environmental impact. In this paper, ECEC analysis is extended to quantify purchased resources and pollutant emissions of industrial production. Accordingly, an extended ECEC framework is proposed, integrating the resource, economic, and environmental factors. Furthermore, for better understanding of sustainability, a concept of Ecological Life Cycle Cost (ELCC) is put forward, revealing the relationship between the ECEC and traditional economic evaluation. Finally, a case study of China's raw coal production is used to illustrate the features of these proposed frameworks. The ECEC and ELCC analyses indicate the great ecological influence of raw coal which has been underestimated by the traditional assessment approaches.