Modern transport relies on a wide range of invisible yet essential lubricants. But moving people and cargo with cars, trucks, planes and ships has a huge impact on our planet. Our industry has to ask itself a big question: How can we make transport more sustainable and combat climate change?

First, the cold, hard facts. Transport is responsible for nearly a quarter of the European Unions greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-biggest emitting sector after energy. Despite efforts to make it more sustainable, transports contributions to total emissions increased by 33 percent between 1990 and 2007, while other sectors have reduced their share. Lowering that figure for transport is a challenge that needs immediate action.

Until now, every human generation has increased its resource use. This is a challenge for the lubricant and base oil industry, as the raw materials it uses – mostly crude oil – are not renewable. Additionally, fossil fuels are the main source of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Climate change and its associated dangers are pushing industries worldwide to act, and the lubricant and base oil industry should do the same. Some steps have already been taken to make it more sustainable.

Generally, our lubricants industry reduces more CO₂ emissions with its finished products in the use phase…than it actually produces in making these products. Thus, it is important that we start working toward measuring, managing and modifying impacts and optimization potentials at every point in our process and value chain, said Apu Gosalia, vice-president of sustainability and global intelligence at Fuchs Petrolub SE.

The ability to reduce emissions hinges on our understanding of a products impact on sustainability and the accuracy of our emissions projections. To this end, a lifecycle assessment is a valuable tool that provides quantitative measurement of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of product or per energy unit of a product. But the challenge in adopting such assessments is that they are seldom used in the lubricants industry because of one key issue – the difficulty in establishing commonly accepted boundaries for the breadth of data sources used in assessment calculations.

In other words, despite the fact that there are general and specific standards for conducting lifecycle assessments and creating tools to measure sustainability, it is difficult to compare results across sectors. To date, no specific assessment rules for lubricants exist.

Should any and all processes that have an environmental impact during a products lifecycle be taken into account? Or can some – like sea transport to a lubricant plant – be omitted because of their potentially small impact? As numerous options are available and taken into account in different scenarios and locations, the end result can vary a lot depending on how the boundaries for the assessment are set. And not to even mention all the other impact categories in addition to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions that could be considered in lifecycle assessment.

One solution is a cradle-to-grave approach to assessing the total lifecycle of lubricants. This methodology covers every step, from sourcing raw materials and processing them into base oils to the assessment of processed lubricants in use and their eventual disposal. Incineration releases the carbon in hydrocarbon molecules into the air as CO₂.

This comprehensive method can be used to determine the carbon footprint of lubricants and provide clear indicators in which stage the most substantial greenhouse gas emissions are reported and where there is the most room for reductions. It also grants the industry a unique insight into the possibilities for developing new, enhanced and sustainable high-quality products.

A simple example shows how this approach could be applied. Take a European passenger car using regular engine oil, with an average fuel consumption of 6 liters per 100 kilometers. On a 30,000 km drive, one oil change is needed. For the entire journey, this translates to 1,800 L of fuel burnt and 10 L of oil used.

A higher-quality oil that is optimized for fuel economy and has double the lifetime would shrink these numbers substantially. Assuming this simple solution would lower fuel consumption by 1 percent and engine oil consumption by 50 percent, which translates to 18 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of long-life oil emissions saved. Considering the carbon footprint of the vehicles fossil-based engine oil is assessed at 4.5 to 5.5 CO₂e/kg of lubricant by lifecycle assessment, the greenhouse gas savings achieved by the enhanced lubricant in use can be seen as considerably greater. Both fuel and emission savings can be made even greater with further developments such as enhancing the quality of the lubricants main component – base oil – while manufacturing it from renewable waste and residues. Although a consensus still needs to be reached regarding lifecycle assessment calculation methodology, the power of this simple example can already be put into perspective by applying it to hundreds, thousands or millions of cars.

It is important to understand that when responding to climate change, the preferred course of action in our industry should be to focus on areas with the greatest potential for improvement, usually found in energy or fuel savings enabled by lubricant technology. One of these is long-life engine oils used in transportation.

An optimistic view of the possibilities is shared by John Uhran, director of strategy and new business development at Lubrizol Corp. I see great opportunity in connecting product development with sustainability. By identifying where lubricants and fuels can have the greatest impact, highly beneficial advancements should be achievable both in the short and long term, he said.

Ultimately, one of the most important questions that any business will ask itself is how much will the move towards sustainability cost? But that question should be how can business profit from investing in sustainability?

Industry-wide change does not happen overnight, but comes when key players are, with a positive mindset, determined to reach goals even if the objectives seem unachievable at first. Making the planet a better place for future generations is possible and it can be combined with creating new sources of revenue.

Mika Kettunen is technical product manager at Finnish refiner Neste. He supports base oil sales and production with responsibility for formulation development projects in driveline and industrial applications and works closely with additive manufacturers and Neste R&D.