Discussion of PCF practices

Once the most well-known standards for PCF are introduced, we can continue to the discussion and evaluation of the suitability of the standards. Table 4 summarizes the main characteristics that has impact to PCF practices and results. These characteris-tics are chosen based on case study of medium-density fiberboard in China (S.Wang, et al., 2018) and case study of side panel of coach (Ziadeh, 2015).

When looking the standards on superficial level, contain and target might look really similar. These indeed have similar goal to provide guidance for carbon footprint analy-sis of a products and are based LCA -approach. GHG Protocol, PAS 2050 and ISO 14067 have similar approach to be traditional standard, from where GHG Protocol is more focused on appropriate reporting practices and latter two more on accounting and calculation in a more practical manner. EPD Climate Declaration is based on ISO -guided PCRs and mandatory publicly available reporting, which clearly differs from other standards even every party encourages to open communication.

Every standard recognizes partial life cycle (cradle-to-gate) to be applied for product under review. PAS 2050 and ISO 14067 does not place any limitations using this even advising to take all steps in to the account. Instead, GHG Protocol and EPD Climate declaration allow partial life cycle only in cases when the product is intermediate such as component of a production line or use of final product is unknown. Full life cycle emissions are considered to play more important role in business-to-customer –sector (B2C) than business-to-business –sector.

For calculations, two important factors can be pointed out: cut-off criteria and capital goods. Both of these have direct impact to result biases and complexity of the calcula-tions. From the four standards PAS and EPD allows to exclude 5 % of the emissions, where GHG Protocol demands 100 %. ISO do not specify the cut-off rule unequivocally and leave the evaluation of the process significance to companies, which means that cut-off criteria can be similar to PAS and EPD if justified clearly. All the standards have similar view about the capital goods exclusion but GHG Protocol and ISO considers evaluating these effects to results. This is because capital goods might represent im-portant role on product’s emissions. Rita Garcia and Fausto Freire compared different PCF standards for particleboard and research showed that variation can be even 20 %.

This was the emission difference between ISO and GHG Protocol. For PAS 2050 and EPD, capital goods would have increased the results for 12 %. Similar results were dis-covered by S. Wang and Co. when they compared standards for medium-density fiber-board manufactured in China. In this case capital goods presented approximately 11,3

% of the total emissions and authors argued it to be the main reason for result variation

between the standards. EPD Climate Declaration was not part of this research (S.Wang, et al., 2018) (Garcia & Freire, 2013).

Data requirements are defined precisely in every standard and fundamental is the same. Primary data in other words measured data supposed to be gathered from all owned or controlled processes. Standards by default assumes that company have good possibility and competence to make detailed measurement from own processes, which will decrease the uncertainty of the results. Thought ISO states that data from all important processes should be site-specific and contribute 80 % from the total amount.

This may be challenging task when major portion of the components are outsourced and not under company’s control. Primary data should be always used when available and secondary data to be avoided if practically possible. GHG Protocol requires de-tailed data quality assessment in their reporting and challenge companies to set plan how to improve data quality, driving down the result uncertainty over time.

Table 3. Summarize and comparison of PCF standards

Specifications PAS 2050 GHG Protocol ISO 14067 EPD Climate Declaration Cut-off criteria 95% of the total

emissions,

Not specified 95% of the total emissions, ex-cluding inputs ≤ 1% from total emissions Capital goods Excluded Excluded but

advised to con-sider if possible

Excluded if not significant

Excluded

Data requirement Primary data for owned and

Reporting Not required and

100 years 100 years 100 years 100 years, guid-ance from PAS2050

2.7.2 Choosing standard for PCF

When choosing the suitable standard for which the target company could go towards, following aspects shall be taken in consideration:

- Goals and strategy of the company

- Fundamentals and level of difficultness of the standard - Limitations and requirements set by company (chapter 1.2)

At the moment, company is not aware of the carbon emissions of any product and therefore haven’t placed any reduction targets, which means that carbon management on product level is in the beginning. The goal of the PCF assessment is to have an out-look of the emissions, which will be first communicated internally, and once results are confirmed and uncertainties are removed, external communication will take place. At this stage, company does not have intention for validating the emission results accord-ing to the specific standards by third party, but it can argue that goaccord-ing towards some standard will decrease the workload from future assessment once it will be topical.

Adapting the PCF –study according to standard, would give more reliable estimations of the emissions and credibility when communicating it internally and at the latest exter-nally.

When looking the overalls of the standards, it can be seen that PAS 2050 and EPD Cli-mate Declaration gives the most margin with cut-offs. On the other hand, EPD requires the publicly open PCRs, which will be determined by PCR committee. This means that third party must be involved in the assessment since the beginning of the process, which is not favorable. Also, it limits the usage of partial life cycle only in certain cases.

As stated, ISO does not specify cut-off, but contribution of site-specific data must be at least 80 %. In case of waterjet and other propulsion products, significant number of components and processes are outsourced where company is mostly focused on as-sembly and testing. Gathering site-specific data from suppliers around the world would

exceed the limitations of this research. GHG Protocol won’t be considered as a reck-oned option as it does not provide practical guidance and won’t allow cut-offs and par-tial lifecycle without clear arguments.

On chapter 1.2, we introduced 4 criteria for PCF assessment set by the company.

From these 3 out of 4 can be fulfilled by choosing one standard to follow. Suitability for different products and product families comes from uniform rules as the standards can be implemented to any type of product. This is also the fundamental of cost-effective-ness as there won’t be overlapping actions around the assessment. Internal process changes won’t be necessary as the assessment target is to analyze current stage, not optimized or future stage. The 4^th criteria are much more difficult to fulfill. We already know that some level of uncertainty is always present when implementing PCF or LCA, due to its complex nature (Ormazabal, et al., 2014). When product get more complex, risk of more significant uncertainty increases. Therefore, thesis is not able to present a result which accuracy is 100% but it can be stated unambiguously. Comparability be-tween products is only reasonable when using same standard with the same cut-off rules and data quality rules. Therefore, comparability between emissions counted ac-cording to same standard but conducted by different organization, is questionable due to unknown interpretation of the standard guidance.

Basically, there are two potential standards to be implemented for PCF. PAS 2050 and ISO 14067 fulfills the requirements introduced in chapter 1 and offers comprehensive guidance for practicalities. From these two PAS 2050 has coherent cut-off rules com-pared to ISO 14067 but considering company’s other ISO standards and launching of ISO 14000 Environmental management –standard as a requirement to key suppliers, ISO 14067 would be solid continuation for standardization. Therefore, we conclude that both PAS 2050 and ISO 14067 are applicable standards to implement for product car-bon footprint analysis.