The Social Footprint of Hydrogen Production - A Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) of Alkaline Water Electrolysis

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) published in 2015 “seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets to delineate an urgent shift of the world to a sustainable and resilient path. The UN confirms also its three dimensional sustainability concept. Social protection and social well-being are central aspects of the UN concept and the life cycle assessment the adequate tool to analyse also social risks. We take up the UN concept and analyse the social footprint of the hydrogen production with a Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA). The hydrogen economy is seen as an instrument for the transformation of the energy system. To analyse social conditions (human well-being) throughout the hydrogen life cycle we use Sen's capability approach and the S-LCA method as recommended by UNEP and SETAC. Therefore we selected five major functionings of the capability approach (welfare basis, health & safety, social participation, democracy & freedom, decent life) and assigned to these functionings five social impact categories (labour rights, health and safety, human rights, governance, community and infrastructure) of the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB). We connect thereby the Social LCA directly to Sen's capability approach. We selected 23 social indicators from the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB) to assess the social effects of hydrogen production in Germany, Austria, and Spain along the whole hydrogen production process chain on the social impact categories and the functionings of Sen's capability approach. Our social LCA (S-LCA) method based on the UNEP/STAC guidelines allows us on the basis of SHDB to determine the social footprint of hydrogen production and identify the composition and the regional origin of the social footprint (social rucksack).