Evaluation of environmental life cycle cost of steel production - Case study

The life cycle thinking is a concept promoted by the World Steel Association as a basic requirement for making all manufacturing decisions. One of the tools of this approach is life cycle costing. It is a process of an economic analysis to assess life cycle costs (LCC) of a product over its life cycle from its conception and fabrication through operation to the end of its life. In most cases the process takes into account only the pure financial costs incurred in the product life cycle called conventional LCC. There is another type of LCC in the literature - the environmental LCC. It comprises all costs of life cycle product directly covered by actors involved in the product life cycle and externalities felt by society and environment, which are anticipated to be internalized in the future. The paper presents the results of research work aimed at expressing the LCA results in monetary terms and calculation the environmental life cycle costs based on these results. This allowed to connect and present LCA and LCC results in one value which can be used in the decision-making process where there is a choice of options. Proposed conception has been used for estimating the environmental LCC for selected steel products.