1.1 Background
Kongsberg Maritime Finland Oy is part of Kongsberg Maritime, which is international marine sector company In Finland owned by Kongsberg Group. It has three units lo-cated in Turku, Rauma and Kokkola. Azimuth thrusters are designed and manufactured in Rauma, Kamewa waterjets in Kokkola and Turku unit is focusing to ship intelligence development (Kongsberg Group, 2019).
Kongsberg Group launched a sustainability strategy in 2016, which was called “Tech-nology for global challenges”. In addition to focus on human rights, business ethics and anti-corruption, Kongsberg also released ambitious target to decrease carbon emis-sions by 20 % until 2020 (Kongsberg Group, 2016). In 2019’s report it was assumed that target will not be reached as emission level will remain more or less same during the whole period. Concurrently Kongsberg released new sustainability goals for period 2020-2030, which is called “Science based Target”. The goal is to evaluate more accu-rately if the set targets are sufficient for greenhouse gas emission reducing. This strat-egy has been implemented in one unit in Norway and in future it will be conducted to internal operations, value chain and logistics (Kongsberg Gorup, 2019).
On both strategies, it can be seen that Kongsberg is keen to develop more sustainable products and services, which other organizations could utilize. Innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on oceans such as autonomous vessels, hybrid systems and electric ferries are important part of company’s sustainability strategy. According to the reports, Kongsberg’s internal gas emission rate is comparatively low and therefore it did not submit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) –reports after 2017. After the acqui-sition of Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine business and greater interest of carbon foot-print in public, company has decided to continue CDP reporting from 2020 onwards (Kongsberg Gorup, 2019).
Even that Kongsberg and many other companies are reporting carbon emissions, wa-ter- and energy consumption, very rare are reporting and actively calculating individual product carbon footprint. The increased need of more sustainable way of thinking and operating has launched the company’s curiosity to know their product’s carbon emis-sions. At this stage, the target company does not have any resource nor activity around this task.
Today, many entrepreneurs have seen that customers and partners are keen to know individual company’s carbon footprint. Businesses are evolving to more sustainable di-rection as Finland has placed its goal to be carbon neutral by the end of 2035. This means that big companies have to emphasize environmental related questions in order to sustain competitiveness in market. Entrepreneurs’ attitude against social problems has been changed significantly in few years. Already 72 % of the companies feel it im-portant to solve social problems in 2020, as the amount was only 56 % one year ago (Yrittäjät, 2020).
1.2 Research problem and goals
The goal of the thesis is to find the most suitable operating model for carbon footprint measuring in order-supply chain. Found model/standard is intended to be utilize for every propulsion product in Marine sector, which means it must be applicable for sev-eral product and product families. The goal is not to create new way of counting the carbon emissions but instead analyzing and utilizing existing standards and models.
Result of this thesis is to present complete model, which will best suit to company’s current terms and requirements. Following criteria are set by the target company:
- Scalable/suitability for several products and product families - minimized internal process changes
- cost-effectiveness
- unambiguous and comparable result of product carbon footprint.
Scalable model prevents multiple standard utilization and therefore the process is co-herent regardless about the product or business unit. It is not favorable that the created model would change internal processes significantly at this stage. The third criteria are more or less the result of the two first criteria. It also involves the needed resources for launching and running the carbon footprint analysis.
The fourth criteria are linked to the second goal of the thesis, which is to use the se-lected model and calculate example value for waterjet carbon footprint manufactured in Kokkola. From this value, the target is to scale the value for whole waterjet product family. Result from this calculation should be able to express in carbon dioxides (CO2) in kilograms or in another equivalent unit.
Research questions for the thesis are following:
- RQ1: What is the most suitable practice in terms of cost effectiveness, scalabil-ity and reliabilscalabil-ity for propulsion product carbon footprint analysis?
- RQ2: How much one waterjet generates carbon footprint?
1.3 Research structure and limitations
The structure of this thesis follows the basic guideline of master thesis. After introduc-tion and limitaintroduc-tions are presented, chapter 2 presents the first part of the theoretical background focusing to the theory of carbon emissions, its role in climate change and product carbon footprint (PCF) fundamentals. The second theoretical background con-centrate to the existing carbon footprint standards. This chapter will also briefly intro-duce the computer software that are nowadays in use for carbon footprint calculations.
Following from this, chapter 4 discusses about the standards and based on evaluation, suggestion for the most suitable one for company’s use according to the criteria will be done.
On chapter 5, carbon emission for waterjet will be calculated as a case study by utiliz-ing the chosen standard guidelines, LCA methodology and LCA calculation software.
Results will be presented for the whole unit breaking it down to the component level re-sults. Chapter 5 will also include discussion of the results and limitations. At interpreta-tion, different scenarios are created for supply chain and manufacturing to compare the emissions in different cases. Chapter 6 will introduce the framework and requirements for conducting the PCF -calculation for other propulsion products based on literature re-view and case study.
For the theoretical background, existing literature will be used widely. Standards and existing models are easy to reach but in addition to that, real case examples, evalua-tions and scientific articles will be used in order to answer on research question 1. For the question 2, technical data of the waterjet and publicly available databases will be used.
The thesis is intended to be utilized on propulsion product business unit, which means that evaluated and suggested methodology is made from the manufacturing industry point of view. Because of LCA practices coherent nature, same practices can be used to other Kongsberg’s products, but it won’t be applicable for services due to its different features and LCA stages.
The examined value chain includes the activities from raw material extraction to the point when the product is packed and ready to be shipped to customer. This means that from the full life-cycle assessment, the last transportation, usage- and disposal parts are excluded from the research. This is because of two reasons: the very limited availability of information of usage profile and data, because several projects are clas-sified and administered by governments. Second, waterjets and propellers are powered with diesel engines and therefore emitted carbon emissions are insignificant on usage stage. Data availability is also the reason for leaving outside the disposal part.
On a case example, carbon footprint calculation will include emissions that are gener-ated by the manufacturing activities and transportation of the components. Other emis-sions will be excluded from this section. Thesis will suggest the most sufficient model and give abstract result from the case calculation but will not suggest how to reduce carbon footprint from the observed value chain.
By the company request, published version will not include product model names, sup-pliers’ names and detailed locations. Also, component masses are excluded from this version due to a product information confidentiality.
1.4 Motivation
The idea for this thesis’s topic was launched by the company representative Ville Rimpilä. In March 2020 he explained the company’s need for carbon footprint evalua-tion and how important it is to go to more sustainable way of working from the business point of view. This thesis will support the new sustainable strategic where carbon emis-sion has essential role in future.
From the personal point of view, the topic is not important only from business-, and marketing point of view but also ecologically important. As said in the introduction chapter, companies are more aware and interested about their carbon footprint be-cause today customers, both individuals and companies, are going towards more sus-tainable lifestyle and demands more information about the environmental impact of the product and service. This type of behavior is crucial to achieve the 1,5 °C global warm-ing limit, which was agreed in Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 (Mänty, 2019). Unfortu-nately, the gap between the optimal- and real lifestyles is still quite big. People and companies have not yet been able to adopt to these new frames, which would slow down the global warming and eventually global changing.
The motivation lies behind the possibility to study something that concerns not only the target company but also all the whole maritime business and our ecological system.
Standards that are introduced in this research, are prepared to empower companies’
carbon footprint analysis. Similar, but much simpler ways of studying individual carbon footprint can be found in internet. I strongly believe that the first step is to know in-curred emission before these can be gradually reduced. Same paradigm applies to car-bon footprint than any other numerical value in the economy field: If you cannot meas-ure it, you cannot manage it (M-J. Franchetti, 2012).