A quantitative sustainability assessment framework for petroleum refinery projects

Petroleum refinery industry (PRI) projects are inherently unsustainable for the most part, because of their environmentally and socially negative potential effects; nonetheless, their development is inevitable due to their deep positive impact on economic development for stakeholders and the society at large. With these competing realities, it is extremely important to develop tools that can quantify the level of sustainability of various alternatives, so managers can make informed decisions about how to go forward with these projects. Due to the complexity of life cycle and sustainability assessment of PRI projects, in addition to their complicated multidisciplinary nature, indicator-based approaches are used oftentimes as sustainability assessment tools. In this paper, an indicator-based sustainability framework is proposed based on the literature review at the qualitative level to cover the pillars of sustainability (which is social, economic, and environmental). Then, a quantitative set of sustainability assessment factors is developed which tries to address global sustainability concerns and to reinforce the understanding of sustainability by utilizing quantitative means. UN sustainability indicators were used as the basis for the study, and the framework was developed further to reflect the specifics of PRI projects; the result of this step is 140 quantitative sustainability factors. To realize the highly relevant global concerns regarding sustainability assessment factors to be applied to PRI projects, the screening process has been done by Delphi technique in combination with Fuzzy set theory, to select the most important as well as relevant indicators which results in 101 relevant quantitative sustainability factors; then, a panel of experts has converted the screened quantitative factors to meaningful ones for PRI projects. The expert panel has then interpreted the list of factors, according to expert judgments. Finally, a comparative study has been done to see how the results will compare with those of frequently used systems. The results of the study are of primary importance due to their applicability in sustainable decision-making, as well as for future studies. The reinforced indicator-based sustainability framework will make a core, not only to assess existing plants with various characteristics but also for new refineries that are going to be developed based on sustainability principles.