Hear from our experts on how a PCF is measured and supports a life cycle analysis, how industry guidelines are paving the way for global standards, and the challenges the industry faces today to reach its net-zero 2050 goals.
Featuring:
- Ian Donovan, Group Sustainability Engagement Manager, | IMCD
- Ana Almeida, Global Marketing Communications Specialist, Coatings & Construction | IMCD
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Today, the chemical industry is accountable for 8% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts are being made by companies around the world to decrease this number, but with nearly 77% of the emissions being accounted for in Scope 3, or emissions generated indirectly from a company’s value chain, the industry is aiming to track, measure, and reduce carbon emissions across the value chain. That's where PCFs and LCAs come into play: product carbon footprints and life cycle analysis.
Let’s break down the methodology and the transparency it’s bringing to the chemical industry.
Defining a PCF & how it is measured
Every step of a product’s life creates emissions. That’s why it’s more critical than ever to track, from start to finish, the impact of a product and its greenhouse gas emissions.
When looking specifically at PCFs, they consider the total greenhouse gas emissions generated by a product, from the extraction of raw materials to the time it leaves the supplier's gates, otherwise known as cradle-to-gate. It is also possible to include the use phase and the end-of-life impact of a product, otherwise known as cradle-to-grave study.
When calculating a product's carbon footprint, several factors are considered:
- The amount of production-related raw materials
- How much utilities and energy were consumed to create the product…
- The direct emissions from manufacturing and related on-site utilities of production/generation
- The total transportation of raw materials, including the site-to-site transportation
- The treatment and disposal of process wastes and wastewater treatment
It can become complex and does open the door to many challenges on how exactly this should be calculated and estimated.
Industry guidelines to overcome challenges
To overcome these challenges, several initiatives published over the years guidelines to define more strict rules when assessing a PCF. A well-known initiative was founded by a group of chemical companies that joined forces to form an organization: Together for Sustainability, commonly referred to as TfS. Their primary goal is to build a global standard for environmental, social and governance performance of supply chains. Their most notable contribution to PCFs is the creation of the “product carbon footprint guidelines." These guidelines break down the intricacies of carbon measurement to support industry-standard PCF documentation to measure decarbonization and defossilisation efforts. The guidelines have already seen a positive response, with many major producers around the world adopting them into practice.
While adoption has started by producers, not all are sharing their PCF data and many are looking for alternatives to measure their product emissions today. This is something explored quite extensively in the guidelines because data collection for product emissions is a valid challenge as we get up and running. In the TfS guideline, there is a decision tree for exactly this. If you’re in a scenario where you do not have access to primary data today, you can look at an Emission Factor from a high-quality database or from industry averages. It’s not the end solution, but in the interim, it will help to build momentum.
Distinguishing between a PCF & LCA
Defining, calculating and documenting a product’s carbon footprint (from the start) will support the industry in making leaps in evaluating overall sustainable impact. With proper PCFs in place, the industry can also focus on more environmental aspects and offer full LCAs, life cycle analysis, of products.
PCFs and LCAs are often used interchangeably in the chemical industry and often need clarification to distinguish how they are different and how they work together. Simply put:
- A PCF is focused solely on the greenhouse gas emissions generated by a product.
- An LCA, on the other hand, looks at other environmental impacts and includes usually a complete set of indicators addressing impacts on ecosystems, human health and depletion of resources.
Progress to date & challenges ahead
In theory, with PCF data in hand, it's possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which will help to reach the ambitious 2050 goals. But as of today, it seems we are not only falling short but the UN reports that we are actually going in the opposite direction. The goal is to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, but rather, experts are already projecting a 9% increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
PCFs seem to provide the industry with an opportunity to track emissions along the value chain and, ideally, better understand where we can drive them down. But something is still standing in the way. The challenge for any company is to ensure that PCFs are calculated using a standardised methodology that ensures consistency and comparability between products and organizations. TfS has created the PCF guidelines to help bring clarity to the chemical industry so that companies can measure, manage and reduce emissions. They have been designed to be ISO & GHG protocol accounting standards compliant which helps provide customers with credible PCFs
Another challenge is to ensure PCF data can then be easily available to other actors in the value chain. As of now, many are keeping this information close to their chest but with continued focus and collaboration from within the industry this challenge can also be overcome
Value of PCFs & the important role they play
While there is a huge effort today to develop uniform and harmonized product carbon footprint documentation for the industry, it takes time. Some have automated PCF calculations, but many are still done manually today, resulting in a tedious process, especially for those doing it for the first time. And this work will need to be revisited at least every 5 years, or sooner if manufacturing processes have changed. TfS guidelines require this to keep the data clean and allow for accurate measurement of emissions.
Despite the manual work required today, PCFs are valuable and we must consider the bigger picture of what we are trying to achieve. First, it’s creating uniformity and transparency in the chemical industry that simply does not exist today. With concerns about greenwashing, this would not only legitimize but also support decarbonization and defossilisation efforts. Secondly, with this data in hand, the industry can make informed decisions about how we source, develop and transport materials. Third, and probably most importantly, we can set benchmarks and measure sustainable progress toward the world’s net-zero 2050 goals.
Key takeaways
- PCFs are a critical part of the CO2 emissions discussion, but only a piece of the puzzle when considering the full environmental role of an LCA.
- While there are many challenges with the development and sharing of PCFs, industry guidelines have been put in place to help steer the industry and have already seen a positive industry response.
- Using PCFs will have many long-term positive outcomes for the chemical industry as they are directly founded on data; this can help to combat the concerns of greenwashing we see often today.
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