Assessment and Valuation of Sustainability Benefit of CSRP Research Projects (1A3)

Project Status: Complete
Project Participants: Rio Tinto, University of Queensland, Hatch
Project Leader: Glen Corder (University of Queensland)

The aim of this work was to develop and test a methodological framework for the assessment and valuation of the sustainability benefits of research outcomes from CSRP.  The rationale behind this project was to develop an assessment process that would highlight the overall environmental, community and wider economic benefits from CSRP research outcomes in addition to any direct financial benefits. 

An initial literature review found that no “off-the-shelf” framework exists nor could one be readily adapted for this type of assessment.  As a result, a methodology was developed to fulfil the particular needs of this application.  The requirements of this particular application may be expressed as the ability to:

• Identify key sustainability categories for CSRP projects.
• Incorporate varying levels of accuracy and data availability to estimate sustainability benefits.
• Estimate the potential total sustainability benefits assuming broadscale uptake.
• Valuate the benefits in monetary and non-monetary terms.

The methodology developed to fulfil these requirements comprised four steps: characterisation, quantification, extrapolation and valuation.

The characterisation step compares the project outcomes against a variety of sustainability categories to identify where the main sustainability contributions lie, and to reduce the scope of further assessment to the categories of importance. The second step was the quantification of the sustainability contributions in terms of the smallest applicable unit, that is for a single piece of equipment or a particular site.  Extrapolation of these contributions to 100% of the Australian industry level potential uptake, incorporating parameters which limit the applicability, is the third step in the methodology. Finally, these potential contributions were valued in monetary and non-monetary terms to present a clear and concise summary of the potential project benefits. The assessment framework was applied to 5 projects as a demonstration and trial of its applicability. 

These projects were selected based on their coverage of the CSRP programs and the expectation of broader industry applicability.  Results of the assessment showed a number of sustainability benefits for each project.