Elisabeth Ekener

I am docent in Strategies for sustainable development at the Dept. of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), division Sustainability Assessment and Management. My doctoral thesis was namedTracking down Social Impacts of Products with Social Life Cycle Assessment. My area of research is Social Sustainability, and more specifically in Social LCA. I have conducted a case study applyingSocial LCA on a laptop, as well as one applying Social LCA methodology one-waste handling in Pakistan. Further, Social LCA was used toassess biofuels and fossil fuelsin aprojecttogether with IVL, financed by f3 Fossil Free Fuels.  This project was continued with asecond phase, combining the conducted Social LCA for vehicle fuels with an Environmental LCA and a LCC of the same, integrating them into aLife Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA).The integration was conducted with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, using stakeholder profiles, to demonstrate different outcomes of the LCSA depending on differing world views. I have also led a project within theCESC center, aiming at developing methodology for assessing the use phase in Social LCA, testing the developed approach on a mobile phone.

Also, in the EU-projectREFLEX, I was involved in assessing some future energy scenarios modelled for Europe with Social LCA methodology.

I have produced three reports (reportI,II andIII) (only in Swedish) for Naturvårdsverket (Swedish EPA) on interlinkages between the different dimensions in sustainability, in particular focusing on the 17 SDGs in Agenda 2030. I have also been part of a project evaluatingSino-Swedish Eco Cities cooperation from s social sustainability perspective. Another research project is a literature review on social impacts fromGMO corps, being part on the largeMistra Biotech project. In an assessment of different ways to destruct outdated ammunition we used anethical assessment tool applied in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis software.

Other work related to sustainability is a project for innovation clusters (Vinnväxt) to design an approach for identifying social sustainability aspects in their innovation process, supported by scenario methodology. Based on this work, we are now developing a scheme for sustainability assessment and management for the multidisciplinary transport research hubITRL.

Scenario techniques are also the basis in the CESC "Scenarios and sustainability impacts in information societies" project, where I was involved inassessing the depicted ICT-societiesfuture scenarios from asocial sustainability perspective.

I was also part of a SEI-led project,UrbanCircle, during years 2018-2022, that sought to integrate waste management and resource recovery into a circular economy, where my task was to assess redesigned circular systems for urban waste treatment from a sustainability perspective. One additional outcome of this project in 2022 was a brand new PhD  - Daniel Ddiba at SEI - for whom I was the main supervisor.

In 2020the 7th Social LCA conference was held in 2020 in Gothenburg, Sweden (an online event due to the pandemic), with me as organizer and chair togheter with Henrikke Baumann at Chalmers University of Technology. I have also been member of the Scientific Committee to the previous conferences on Social LCA; 5th Social LCA Conference at Harvard, the US, in 2106 and6th Social LCA Conference in Pescara, Italy, in September 2018, as well as the upcoming 8th Social LCA Conference in Acchen in September 2022. I'm also in the Steering Committee of the networkSocial LC Alliance, gathering stakeholders with an interest in Social LCA. The main task of the Social LC Alliance has so far been to update and improve the Social LCA Guidelines, originally issued in 2009 by theLife Cycle Initiative. The newGuidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products and Organisations 2020 was publised in Decmeber 2020 with me as one of the Editors. In 2022, a subsequent piloting project on the new Guidlines  resulted in a publication with feedback on the Guidelines.

My current research is a project on methodological developments of Social LCA in some challenging areas, funded by Formas' annual open call, with the aim to, among other things, address the issue of establishing Impact pathways (cause-effect chains) for the impact assessment process in Social LCA. This project is in its closing.

My newest project is a 3-year grant for the years 2022-2024 from the Swedish Energy Agency to assess windpower from a lifecycle prespectiv, covering both social and environmental issues along the life cycle, as well as during operation.

I have a background in the business community as an Environmental and Sustainability consultant, most recently at the global consultancyWSP. I was part of the development process on international level for theISO 26000 Social Responsibilityguidance standard, finalized in 2010. Now at KTH, I just love to work with my talented and committed colleagues for a Sustainable Future!

Phone  +46 73 460 53 66