In 2015 United Nations published an Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), representing “a plan of action for overcoming poverty while protecting the planet and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity”. The SDG stress that economic growth needs to be fulfilled taking into consideration social responsibility and environment protection. For what concerns environment protection, goal 13 “Climate action” is becoming imperative. Greenhouse effect is seen as the main contributor to climate change and therefore one of the most urgent actions to be taken is reducing emission of greenhouse effect gas (GHG). Similarly, energy is needed for developed and developing countries so also goal 7 “Affordable and Clean Energy” needs to be among top priorities, aiming to have clean energy at low cost.
Energy companies are one of the primary sources of greenhouse gases, they utilize about 57% of global fuel produced worldwide. Even if renewables are expected to be the fastest growing source of energy, with primary share growing from 3% in 2015 to 10% in 2035, natural gas is expected to grow faster than oil and coal, overtaking coal to be the second largest energy source in 2035. For this reason, main Energy industries have endorsed an agenda for sustainability, focusing on carbon footprint reduction. Baker Hughes as energy technology company has taken the commitment to achieve a 50% reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions from own operations by 2030 and net zero CO2 equivalent emissions by 2050. This commitment aligns Baker Hughes with the Paris Climate Agreement targeting to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
During the timeframe of this PhD work the world went through two main crises that strongly impacted the energy sector. In 2020 the world faced its first global pandemic: Covid-19 has changed the lifestyle of the whole world population. Due to the pandemic many countries established lockdowns, forcing people to stay home limiting their activities, global energy demand dropped by 5% in 2020, with the positive effect of reducing energy-related CO2 emissions by 7%, and the negative one of decreasing global energy investment by 18%. In 2021, still many economies were suffering the weight of Covid-19 lockdowns. Nevertheless, renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar PV continued to grow rapidly, and electric vehicles set new sales records. Many countries following the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) call took new commitments for contributing to the global effort to reach climate goals; more than 50 countries, as well as the entire European Union, have pledged to meet net zero emissions targets. In 2022, while I am writing, the world is in the middle of its first global energy crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been by far the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, and its restrictions of natural gas supply to Europe and European sanctions on imports of oil and coal from Russia are affecting the energy market. Prices for spot purchases of natural gas have reached levels never seen before, exceeding the equivalent of USD 250 for a barrel of oil. Coal has also hit record prices, while oil rose well above USD 100 per barrel in mid‐2022 before falling back. Higher energy prices are also increasing food insecurity in many developing economies, with the heaviest burden falling on poorer households where a larger share of income is spent on energy and food. Some 75 million people who recently gained access to electricity are likely to lose the ability to pay for it, meaning that for the first time since we started tracking it, the total number of people worldwide without electricity access has started to rise. Almost 100 million people may be pushed back into reliance on firewood for cooking instead of cleaner and healthier solutions. On the other side this could be a boost for improving energy efficiency and changing consumption habits in some of the most emitting countries. In the last three years energy markets and policies have changed because of Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come. The need for clean energy and the urgency of cost‐competitive and affordable clean energy are now stronger, together with the energy security. This alignment of economic, climate and security priorities has finally started to push the world towards a better value for the people, for the prosperity, and for the planet. It has been recognized as essential not to leave anyone behind, especially at a time when geopolitical crisis on energy and climate are more visible. The journey to a more secure and sustainable energy system may not be a smooth one. But today’s crisis makes it crystal clear why we need to press ahead.
In this thesis the social, environmental, and cost impact of innovative manufacturing technologies recently introduced in Baker Hughes were analyzed, excluding use phase impacts, being product’s performances invariant. Since innovation is a complex social process, where monetary interest is strongly related to social acceptance, it is important to validate its impact on stakeholders taking in account also the risks related to the new technology introduction. The scope of this research is to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all the major sources of ecological impacts (energy use, waste, resource consumption etc.) and categories of impacts (climate change, toxicity, land use, etc.), analyzing impact for specific use cases of gas turbine’s component production options, so that stakeholders can make an informed decision on which technology to buy or use, as well as find reference data to identify the sectors causing the greatest social impacts (hot spots). Main target can be summarized as:
1. Define the correct indicators that can lead to a sustainable future, proposing a path that can be beneficial for energy companies and for the society.
2. Compare the applicable methodologies for product sustainability assessment providing direction to the best tools and databases to be used.
3. Evaluate the environmental and social performance of background processes finding main drivers and negligible parameters to simplify future decision maker’s choices.
The state of the art of Sustainability and application in energy companies will be presented in Chapter 1, followed by the explanation of the energy trilemma in chapter 2. Current methodologies and tools available for environmental and social Life Cycle assessment will be presented in chapters 3 and 4 including a proposal to evaluate social life cycle assessment (SLCA) of products, to take decision and prioritize company activities on that taking into consideration what is called “triple bottom line”: society, environment, and prosperity. SLCA together with environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) can contribute to the full assessment of a product or service in the context of sustainable development. The SLCA starts from the stakeholder analysis and definition of social indicators (as: expenses for health, safety or education, work accidents, possibility to organize in Trade unions and so on), and needs to be developed with company’s stakeholder's consensus in order to represent their view. The steps and the processes are the same used for ELCA. The product under study is the NovaLT™16 Gas Turbine, designed and produced by Baker Hughes; a selection of most impacting components has been performed and is reported in Chapter 12 Appendix B.
Nozzles and bucket are the most impacting components in terms of environmental impact, so it was decided to produce them via additive manufacturing (AM) instead of investment casting (IC). As explained in Chapter 5, AM is revolutionizing prototyping production and even small-scale manufacturing. Usually, it is assumed that AM has lower environmental impact, compared to traditional manufacturing processes, but there have been no comprehensive ELCA studies confirming this, especially for the gas turbines and turbomachinery sector. LCA is the methodology applied to compare the environmental and social performance of production of two gas turbine’s components via IC (traditional) or AM (innovative) as detailed in Chapter 6 where five use cases are reported. Comparing the environmental and social performance of innovative technology introduction versus the traditional one (AM vs. IC) to produce a Shroud for Gas Turbine also checking the applicability of human health as an indicator. Then it has been analyzed the environmental and social impact of introducing additive manufacturing for spare parts production developing a survey to involve internal stakeholders in weighting the different indicators. Finally, in Chapter 7 conclusions and suggestions for future development are reported.
From the analysis performed, it has been recognized that:
• the most environmental impacting components of a gas turbines are blades and nozzles (typically made by high alloy metals and produced by investment casting)
• additive manufacturing is in general a good option to reduce environmental and social impact of components traditionally produced via investment casting
• From Social standpoint human health in terms of DALY is a good methodology to quickly evaluate the social impact of a good and alternative design options.
• A detailed Social LCA using SimaPro plus SHDB database can estimate the risks related to good production. This methodology, even if more qualitative respect to the DALY is powerful to assess where the potential hotspots are in terms of supply country and industry sector.
• Cobalt is a very risky hotspot. Reducing its utilization or procuring it from socially responsible mining companies can be a way to reduce risks.
• A new KPI is proposed, avoiding contemplating the cost as it is highly fluctuating, taking in consideration amount of resource used (material and energy)
The variation of Energy, Social risk (or health risk), Raw material amount, and carbon footprint of base and redesigned component, can be used to calculate a single KPI. With this sustainability KPI it is possible to fully compare the different production options.