As an approach to calculation of the impact, activity-based costing (ABC) will be used for calculations of environmental costs. Emblemssvåg and Bras worked and analyzed the ABC as a method for environmental analyses. The method substitutes the cost for the production in money with an environmental emission, e.g. CO emissions. The emissions are measured and calculated from the energy and resources used. Then the emissions are allocated to the different products produced using the resources in the model.
The problems with ABC is that it requires a lot of data for a qualitative and accurate allocation of the cost from the resources. This is why the method fits well into a DES model. During a run In a DES environment it is easy to grab lot of detailed results needed for accurate allocation. The problem is that DES require a lot of initial effort to build the model. The approach to analyze environmental impact in a DES model is only beneficial if there is requirements for detailed analyzes and “what-if” scenarios is needed.