Sustainability assessment methods and tools to support decision-making in the process industries

2026-07-22

Sustainability assessment methods are needed to support sustainable technology development and to evaluate the impacts of existing solutions, products and technologies. While there are aspects and indicators that are common to all process industries, sector specific tools are required to address the sector specific features in a fair and transparent way. At the moment, several tools, assessment methods and indicators exist, but they differ in their goal and scope and are intended for different kind of use within companies, by consumers or by authorities to support policy planning and evaluation. Additionally, different tools are focused for different levels of assessment: product, company, industry or society. Thus the problem is not so much the existence of proper tools but rather the lack of understanding and knowledge on how they should be applied and in which context. Furthermore, suitable tools for analysing resource and energy efficiency within the process industries and across the different sectors should be recognized. The aim of the SAMT project is to review and make recommendations about the most potential sustainability assessment methods for evaluating energy and resource efficiency in the process industry. The analysis will focus on the applicability of different methods in industrial settings, the ability of the methods to support decision-making towards sustainable solutions and the suitability of the tools for cross-sectoral analysis. SAMT will evaluate tools that cover either environmental, economic and social aspects, or a combination of these, and apply principles of life cycle thinking. The project will consider demands and make recommendations related to sectorial and cross-sectorial assessment in a wide spectrum of process industries: cement, metal, oil, water, waste and chemical industry. To maximize the impact of the project the work will be supported by active dissemination activities including an implementation strategy as an outcome.

Finland, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway

2026-01-01