Methodological Toolkit for Environmental and Economic Assessment of Metallurgical Enterprise Activities

Abstract

The growing impact on the environment from industrial enterprises, the depletion of non-renewable natural resources and the associated risks make it relevant to take into account the environmental performance indicators of the enterprise along with economic ones. The authors believe that it is possible to conduct an environmental and economic assessment of the enterprise using an integrated indicator. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodological toolkit for conducting an integrated environmental and economic assessment of the activities of a metallurgical enterprise, which makes it possible to make both a retrospective assessment of the enterprise's activities, and a predictive one based on the parity between the economic and environmental spheres of the enterprise. An analysis of domestic and foreign literature showed the absence of a unified approach to environmental and economic assessment of industrial enterprises based on standard financial and environmental reporting, and non-financial reporting standards. The methodology proposed by the author includes two blocks of indicators: an environmental and an economic one. The environmental block is represented by indicators related to the environmental impact. The economic block includes various indicators of the profitability of the enterprise. The authors propose an approach to standardizing indicators and calculating the integral indicator of environmental and economic assessment for the period. A distinctive feature of the author's methodology is the development of a single indicator that combines heterogeneous and multidirectional indicators of the environmental and economic blocks, which makes it possible to assess how the state of the enterprise changes over time, considering the action of various factors and their influence on the changes occurring at the enterprise. The proposed methodology was tested in application to the Seversky pipe plant for the period of 2016–2018. It showed a deterioration in the final environmental and economic assessment of the enterprise's activities as per the indicators of the economic block. At the same time, almost all indicators of the ecological block improved over the period of observation. The result is attributed to the ongoing large-scale technological overhaul at the enterprise, aimed, in many respects, at reducing the impact on the environment and increasing the efficiency of the enterprise. The authors believe that after the completion of the modernization project, an increase in the production volume and a decrease in unit costs with a minimum impact on the environment will help to achieve a balance between the ecological and economic spheres of the enterprise.