The first official system for assessing a product’s carbon footprint has been eagerly awaited. But does it make working out the numbers any easier?

The first official system for assessing a product’s carbon footprint has been eagerly awaited. But does it make working out the numbers any easier?

UK companies for the first time have an official yardstick to work out the carbon footprint of their products, according to the British Standards Institution, the UK government and the Carbon Trust.

The long-awaited measurement framework is designed to calculate a product’s carbon footprint from “cradle to grave” – the total greenhouse gas emissions over its lifecycle, from sourcing, production and storage to its sale, use and disposal.

BSI, a UK standards-setter, developed the system in consultation with 72 businesses, including footprinting pioneers such as PepsiCo UK and Boots. BSI was commissioned to produce the methodology by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Carbon Trust, which advises companies on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The new yardstick, technically a “publicly available specification”, is called PAS2050. It is a government guideline for measuring carbon footprints, not a carbon footprinting standard.

The UK’s newly created Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) recommends that companies use the guidelines to locate carbon intensive hotspots in their supply chains.

DECC hopes that PAS2050 will help firms get the climate change message across to customers – for example, by recommending microwave rather than oven cooking, or washing clothes at 30C rather than at 40C. The guidelines could also improve climate change reporting transparency, DECC says. It hopes the guidelines will make it easier for “all companies, not just the leaders on green strategy” to calibrate carbon savings for green programmes or products.

Recent discussions in parliament about amendments to the UK Companies Act included talk about the introduction of mandatory emissions reporting for businesses. DECC confirms, however, that such an amendment would cover only direct emissions reporting; calculating the carbon footprint of companies’ products will remain voluntary. It is hard to legislate for the supply chain, DECC says, because “a lot of manufacturing is done abroad, outside UK jurisdiction”.

Nonetheless, companies may be increasingly interested in monitoring carbon emissions in their supply chain as cap-and-trade systems – such as the UK’s carbon reduction commitment, due to start in 2011, and the current EU emissions trading scheme – start to hit the bottom line in the heavy industry, manufacturing, retail and tourism sectors.

Measure for measure

DECC maintains that PAS2050 is simple enough to be used by companies in-house. “A product’s carbon footprint is not something you need a PhD to calculate any more. We’ve broken it down to make it more easily accessible,” DECC says.

Yet some of the replies from industry representatives during the specification’s consultation period were scathing, with one senior figure saying only a handful of experts in the UK would be able to use the standard accurately.

Euan Murray, director of strategy at the Carbon Trust, insists that calculating a carbon footprint can be done cheaply. But the more intricate a product becomes, the trickier the job. Murray admits that working out the footprint for an apple is a far cry from that of a mobile phone.

IT supplier Hewlett-Packard, a leader on climate issues, will not touch carbon footprinting of products. Instead HP asks direct suppliers to report energy-related carbon emissions via the Carbon Disclosure Project’s corporate supply chain programme.

Michael Gell, director of carbon consultancy Xanfeon, warns companies intending to use PAS2050 that “there are many pitfalls for the unwary”. He says of the specification: “It does provide a framework to guide people in their thinking about mapping processes and supply chains and identifying emissions. But just because someone has that framework doesn't mean that the task has become easy.”

One problem is that a product’s carbon footprint will change every time there is an alteration in the supply chain, which can make accurate footprinting a constant and laborious process.

But the biggest difficulty many companies will encounter will be the gaps in their carbon data. “Carbon footprinting is like detective work, tracking down all the bits of the supply chain and business process jigsaw,” Gell says. “Very often one comes up against non-cooperation in different parts of the supply chain.”

Where companies are unable to gather data in the supply chain, Murray recommends using “published data” to fill the gaps. “The Carbon Trust is working to aggregate the data sources,” he says. At the moment only the Carbon Trust’s customers can access the data it holds.

While a growing number of industry groups are publishing carbon data, Gell warns that accurate published data from developing countries, where much of the manufacturing sector resides, is extremely hard to find.

Uncertainty remains about the global standardisation of product footprinting methodologies, as other countries start to develop their own systems. Carbon labels are imminent in both France and Japan, and EU-wide product eco-labelling is under discussion.

An ISO international standard on carbon footprinting is in the pipeline, according to BSI. A spokesman says: “We have put forward PAS2050 as a guideline to base the ISO standard on; the hope is that they will base their standard on ours.” Yet it remains unclear how long this will take, and how universally it will be adopted.

What’s the use of PAS 2050?

The PAS 2050 guideline gives companies a way to assess the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of products and services.

Supporters of the guideline want business to use it to:

• evaluate the carbon impacts of different product designs, make-ups and sourcing methods;
• benchmark the effectiveness of ongoing efforts to cut GHG emissions;
• compare the carbon footprints of goods or services – using a common approach; and
• form the basis of corporate environmental reporting.

Source: BSI

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