A Comprehensive and Absolute Corporate Sustainability Assessment and Enhanced Input Output Life Cycle Assessment
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Please Note: The author retains the copyright while the New Jersey Institute of Technology reserves the right to distribute this thesis or dissertation Printing note: If you do not wish to print this page, then select “Pages from: first page # to: last page #” on the print dialog screen The Van Houten library has removed some of the personal information and all signatures from the approval page and biographical sketches of theses and dissertations in order to protect the identity of NJIT graduates and faculty. ABSTRACT A COMPREHENSIVE AND ABSOLUTE CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT AND ENHANCED INPUT OUTPUT LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT by Joseph M. Wright Stresses due to economic activity are threatening to exceed environmental and societal limits with the potential to jeopardize local communities and create global crises. This research establishes new methodologies and analytic techniques to comprehensively assess corporate sustainability and enhance the efficiency of estimating environmental and social impacts with Input Output Life Cycle Assessment (IOLCA). Sustainability assessments and management require consideration of both social and environmental impacts as outflows of economic activity. There are a number of assessment tools available to gain insight into environmental and social impacts; but in most cases, these approaches lack essential components for a comprehensive and absolute sustainability assessment. This dissertation establishes a new quantitative method for assessing sustainability across all the interrelationships within multiple domains of sustainability—economic, social, environmental, and potentially others. The comprehensive sustainability target method (CSTM) is a novel extension to an existing environmental burden sustainability technique. CSTM applies the science-based targets and concept of absolute sustainability to social burdensome and beneficial impacts, environmental beneficial impacts, and the interdependencies between the sustainability domains. CSTM is contrasted with an example of the relative assessments that appear in many sustainability disclosures. In addition to science-based targets for environmental burdens, companies should attempt to meet science-based targets for social and beneficial impacts. Another area of research is focused on IOLCA, a widely used method of estimating environmental impacts based on economic sector level data and analysis. These IOLCA models rely on sector averages and require practitioners to combine impact estimation models to describe specific companies or “custom products”. This research presents a novel extension to environmental input-output modeling that increases the usability and responsiveness of the technique to perform custom product-specific assessments. This enhancement models direct impacts from emissions (and other stressors) attributable to direct spending on commodities across the economy that cause those impacts. The proposed extension directly calculates the internal impact (II); hence, the model implemented is referred to as the IOLCA-II. The IOLCA-II extension directly produces impact estimates in the categories typically used to manage and report greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. In addition to the IOLCA-II enhancement for environmental assessment, selected social impacts are incorporated into the extended model to permit social impact estimation. IOLCA-II impacts are estimated for two scenarios: first, a solar energy application at a university; and second, driverless operation of a long-haul trucking company. The baseline and scenarios are modeled using IOLCA-II and compared to explore the impacts and consequences of the proposed scenarios. These case studies reveal the advantages of using the new methodology and the efficiency of the input-output model results compared to conventional IOLCA hybrid/custom product assessment. A COMPREHENSIVE AND ABSOLUTE CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT AND ENHANCED INPUT OUTPUT LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT by Joseph M. Wright A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering May 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Joseph M. Wright ALL RIGHTS RESERVED APPROVAL PAGE A COMPREHENSIVE AND ABSOLUTE CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT AND ENHANCED INPUT OUTPUT LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT Joseph M. Wright Dr. Reggie J. Caudill, Dissertation Advisor Date Professor of Martin Tuchman School of Management, NJIT Dr. Sanchoy Das, Committee Member Date Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NJIT Dr. Zhiming Ji, Committee Member Date Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NJIT Dr. Paul G. Ranky, Committee Member Date Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NJIT Dr, Athanassios Bladikas, Committee Member Date Associate Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NJIT Dr. Maurie Cohen, Committee Member Date Professor of Humanities, NJIT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Author: Joseph M. Wright Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Date: May 2020 Undergraduate and Graduate Education: Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 2020 Master of Science in Industrial Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 2012 Master of Business Administration, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, 1998 Bachelor of Science Dual Major in Economics and Business Management, SUNY Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 1992 Major: Industrial Engineering Presentations and Publications: Wright, J.M. and R.J. Caudill (2020), A more comprehensive and quantitative approach to corporate sustainability. Environmental Impact Assessment Review. 83, 106409, July 2020 Wright, J.M. and R.J. Caudill More robust custom product input-output life cycle assessment model. Journal of Cleaner Production (To be submitted, May 2020). Caudill, R. J. and J. M. Wright (2015). Sustainability and bubbles. Financial Bubble Conference, Leir Retreat, Ridgefield, CT Wright, J.M., Z. Zheng, and N. Atalla (2013). Assessing the sustainability of renewable energy systems. New Jersey Institute of Technology, First Place Award at 2013 Dana Knox Student Research Showcase, Newark, NJ. April 2013. Wright, J. M., Z. Zheng and R.J. Caudill (2012). Assessing the sustainability of renewable energy technologies. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST). Boston, MA, May 2012. iv This dissertation is dedicated to Nate and Thatcher You can achieve anything. And to Maria, With you, we can achieve anything And to my brother John Collado, Sr. who was taken from us too soon, Friendly neighborhood provocateur, felicitator, Good Samaritan You remind me to always oppose injustice. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thank you to Dr. Reggie Caudill for your guidance, apparently inexhaustible patience, support and leadership as my Dissertation Advisor. Thank you to my Dissertation Committee, Dr. Sanchoy Das, Dr. Zhiming Ji, Dr. Paul Ranky, Dr. Athanassios Bladikas, and Dr. Maurie Cohen for your vital input, diversity of views, particular insight, specific expertise and general attention in developing this work. Funding is gratefully acknowledged for a grant from PSE&G to develop an advanced management and engineering tool for New Jersey industry. This work was produced in part as a resource for, and to be fully compatible with, that tool, referred to as the New Jersey Industry Eco-efficiency and Sustainability (NJ-IES) Guide, providing New Jersey business and industry with the ability to assess eco-efficiency and sustainability and to create sound business strategies that drive the corporation towards sustainability. The work of the developers of Sustainability Target Method, with Dr. Caudill, Joseph Mosovsky, David Dickinson, Joseph Morabito and others is absolutely fundamental to this research. Likewise, the EIOLCA team, at Carnegie Mellon H. Scott Matthews, Christopher Weber, Deanna Matthews, Aryana Venkatesh and Christine Costello. This research is built upon their efforts. Thanks to all for the foundation they provided for this work. I would like to acknowledge the other Industrial Engineering department MS students and PhD candidates who worked alongside me and helped throughout the program, especially, Dr. Nadi Atalla, Dr. Sufian Ikmeis, Dr. Shivon Boodhoo and Zhenqing Zheng. vi I must thank Assured Guaranty and the support of many managers through the process whose interest in my ongoing efforts made pursuit of this program of study something that I could consider in the first place. Last, but not least, I thank my spouse, Maria Collado-Wright and children, Nate and Thatcher for