For manufacturers it is becoming increasingly important to know how products affect the environment. This is also true in the public transport sector. In particular in the field of electric buses, it comes down to correct and reliable information on emissions. Companies must meet regulatory requirements and handle customer inquiries, but also want to achieve their own decarbonization targets. Insights into environmental impacts are provided by a life cycle assessment (English: Life Cycle Assessment, abbreviated LCA). Its results can subsequently be published as an Environmental Product Declaration, abbreviated EPD. Public interest has steadily grown in recent years to disclose environmentally related product-specific information. At the same time, the life cycle assessment constitutes an essential building block for the development of a sound environmental and climate strategy. For these reasons, MAN Truck & Bus decided on another life cycle assessment, namely that of the Lion’s City 10 E, which is used in inner-city line operation.
Standardization enables faster analyses
Companies typically face three main challenges
in such projects: The calculations are very time-consuming, LCA models are highly dependent on data availability and quality, and there is a high internal need for experts to perform the calculations. MAN Truck & Bus therefore engaged the management and IT consulting firm MHP to provide support.
„We built on existing, already certified models for data processing in the software ‘Life Cycle Assessment for Experts’ – the industry standard – but standardized and concretized them,” reports Thorsten Ertel, Associated Partner at MHP.
The team standardized the raw data query, largely took over the data collection to a “Single Source of Truth,” simplified and standardized it further, and specified parts of the calculation. For this, it collected numerous data inputs from different data sources. In doing so, it considered the entire life path of the vehicle – materials and components, manufacturing, logistics, use phase, replacement parts and end of life – and mapped the different production sites and transport routes.
Datenmodellierung von 35 Prozessen mit
über 1.000 Parametern
Additionally, the team prepared the data modeling of 35 processes with more than 1,000 parameters in the software, qualitatively cleaned them, and then evaluated the required indicators. Essential for EPD verification are among others ISO 14040/44 with rules for life cycle assessment, ISO 14025:2006 as the basis for environmental labeling and ISO 22628:2002 for calculating the recyclability and recoverability of motor vehicles. Also the bus-specific EPD standard with applicable Product Category Rules. In the final step, the team advised on the publication of the EPD and built documentation on the methodology and data collection of the LCA software. Thorsten Ertel: “In the project, it required comprehensive knowledge in the areas of sustainability, materials science and automotive engineering, as well as competence in collaboration with Global Delivery.”
Quantitative and qualitative results
In the end, the team could make the processes more efficient and reduce the enormous amount of time required to calculate the life cycle assessment by 30%. This was accompanied by
a rapid publication of the EPD for the sale of the bus to cities and municipalities. More transparent data also enable a better and more accurate calculation. This helps MAN to identify hotspots, uncover inefficiencies, and develop measures to save resources and reduce environmental impacts, as well as gain insights for future projects. This not only promotes decarbonization – the evaluation provides an essential basis to transparently present the impact and to develop measures to reduce these environmental impacts.
“Together we were able to assess the environmental impacts of the 10-m bus and ensure the successful verification of the EPD,” summarizes Anna Kuttenreich, Coordinator for Life Cycle Assessments at MAN Truck & Bus.
In the future, the plan is to transfer the experiences gained from the Lion’s City 10 E EPD to additional variants of commercial vehicles. MHP, together with MAN employees, will continue to simplify the methods and procedures, develop improvements, advance the processes, and expand the standard to perform quantitative and qualitative
