Standards

Growing interest towards the robust and transparent information of products’ environ-mental impact and particularly carbon footprint (CF) has led to the development of nu-merous methods to calculate it. Mostly the methods are based on the three important CF standards: GHG Protocol Product Standard, ISO-14067 and PAS 2050. The Fundamental of all these is the LCA approach, based on earlier introduced ISO14044 -standard and ISO-14040 (S.Wang, et al., 2018). Other initiatives have been created by

different organizations to be used regionally and locally. For example, Japanese Gov-ernment created Labeling Pilot project in 2009 as a result from Carbon Footprint pro-gram and France have created their own standard called BP X30-323

(Pre-Sustainability B.V, 2012).

Product carbon footprint standards provide guidelines for companies to conduct PCF and creates credibility for marketing and branching purposes. As there are no universal standard to follow, companies may struggle to find the most suitable one, which would comply with daily operations (Pre-Sustainability B.V, 2012). Next paragraphs will intro-duce three major standards and their characteristics and additionally few fewer known standards. At the end of this chapter, carbon footprint software is introduced.

2.5.1 GHG Protocol Product standard

GHG Protocol Product Standard was released in October 2011 by World Research In-stitution together with World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Tech-nical Research group consistent more than 100 members, including companies from different industries, governmental organizations, and non-profit organizations. After the first- and second draft and testing by 38 companies, more than 1600 members gave feedback before final revision was published (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011). The framework is built according to LCA standard and the first revision of Publicly Available Standard 2050 (PAS2050). GHG Protocol owns several other emission standards, which they have categorized as a scope 1, 2 &3. Scope 1 standard gives guidance to calculate and report all direct emissions, where scope 2 applies indirect emissions of purchased electricity, heat or steam. Scope 3 includes rest of the indirect emissions on corporate activities, both upstream and downstream in value chain. Scope 3 Corporate Standard and Product standard both take life cycle approach or value chain to GHG accounting (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2020). Difference is that Scope 3 standard is intended for corporate level emission review, where product standard only refers to an individual product. The result from each standard supports the other one if company decides to conduct it separately (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011).

The product standard includes guidance for accounting and reporting of GHG emis-sions. Like on LCA, emissions are presented in CO2 eq. using GWP of 100 years.

Companies are instructed to report 6 different emission: methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and other GHGs included in the inventory. Standard urge to set appropriate business goals before starting to work with the life-cycle assessment to see what the

actual target of the work is and requires companies to analyze carefully which product will be choose for review. GHG protocol divides products and service in two categories:

final- and intermediate goods. Final goods are the ones that will be consumed as is by the end user. Intermediate goods are inputs to other goods or manufacturing. These can be considered as an input to the life cycle of the final product. This variation comes out when defining the unit of analysis of the target product (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011). The standard has created strict boundary definitions as it requires all the at-tributable processes to be included in review. If some process will be excluded from the review, it must be stated in the final report and if all the following circumstances are presented:

- There is no primary or secondary data available - data determination is not possible

- the data gap is negligible.

Non-attributable processes are not required in the system boundary. Processes that are significant, companies should report data source, data quality and how to improve the quality in connection with the final report. Standard does not take a stand which processes should be classified significant, which means company has to make that de-cision. Assessment should also include full life cycle “cradle-to-grave” -approach for the final products and “cradle-to-gate” -approach can be used only if the function of the fi-nal product is unknown (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011).

Emission reduction targets are not mandatory when applying GHG Protocol for prod-ucts, but if company state any reduction targets, it must be mentioned and inventory re-sults and must be updated when significant changes on inventory methodology occurs.

Survey of the inventory results is advised but not obligatory. Survey conducted by third party would give the most credibility and transparence on final report to all stakehold-ers. Survey can be conducted also by first party with the condition that survey provider has no conflict of interest with product inventory. Assurance statement should include how this conflict has been avoided in case of first party survey. Standard encourage companies to create public report from the results and offers detailed structure for this.

Generally, GHG Protocol gives excellent guidelines for accurate emission accounting and reporting but it does lack the practical instructions for calculations. Standard is also quite rigid in terms of allocation and boundary settings. Instead of allocating emissions, GHG Protocol advise to expand system boundary or redefining the functional unit. Re-viewed system should also include 100% of the processes and primary data must be used when process is under company’s control or ownership (Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011).

2.5.2 PAS 2050

PAS 2050 is made by British Standards Institution (BSI). BSI is very traditional organi-zation with more than 100 years of experience around standardiorgani-zations. Company of-fers wide range of services besides the standardization and is increasingly focused on sustainability goals together with United Nations (British Standards Institution, 2020).

PAS 2050’s first version was launched in 2008 and revised in 2011. It was the first car-bon emission related standard on product level. This standard focus more on practical matters of CF calculation where GHG Protocol concentrated more on reporting prac-tices (S.Wang, et al., 2018). The goal of PAS 2050 is to give common knowledge of CF calculations and therefore emission reduction program. It does not require any report-ing, but the guidance is created in a manner that allows companies easily report the re-sults on later stage. Even the full life cycle approach is encouraged to conduct, PAS al-lows cradle-to-gate –approach to be conducted for every product and service without any further clarifications. Standard gives two thresholds for the appropriate calcula-tions:

- All sources of emissions and removals included in functional unit (product) gen-erated during the chosen life cycle period must be included.

- At least 95% of the life cycle emissions and removals within the functional unit (British Standards Institution, 2014).

In turn, capital goods will be excluded from the calculation as a whole. These can be for example machinery, equipment and buildings used during lifecycle. It is essential to be remember that sources for energy and heat of the buildings must be included in the calculations. In addition to capital goods, standard excludes also all inputs that consist less than 1% from the total emissions (British Standards Institution, 2014).

System boundary is introduced similarly than in ISO LCA –standard but with following exclusions: human energy input, transport of consumers and employees to office/fac-tory and animals providing transport services. When conducting PAS 2050, primary data from the processes owned, operated or controlled should applied to the calcula-tions. When gathering data from all downstream processes, secondary data is applica-ble. Standard though advises primary data collection also from processes that are not under control nor owned, highlighting that this method would differentiate company’s PCF analysis from other products. Unlike the GHG Protocol, PAS does not offer accu-rate guidance what is the boundary of ownership or controlling. When conducting cra-dle-to-gate approach, at least 10% of the gathered data shall be primary data. When primary data is not available, secondary data quality rules shall be followed according

to the standard. Competent sources such as official reports from United Nations and its supported organizations should be preferred. If changes occur across the time to the product’s life cycle, reassessment should be done. Temporary GHG emissions change of at least 10 % or planned life cycle change that has at least 5 % impact to results can be considered as a change. Results are valid for maximum of 2 years (British

Standards Institution, 2014).

Practicality can be indicated from the annexes of the standard, where GWP factors and land use change values are presented. Recycled material emission equations are also introduced as well as delayed emission equation with case examples. PAS offers simi-lar assessment verification than GHG Protocol and additionally to third-party and self-verification, other-party verification is an option (British Standards Institution, 2014).

2.5.3 EPD

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD®) is an international system for verifying the life-cycle environmental impact of product or service in a comparable manner. EPD® is Swedish individual company that supports organizations to communicate these impacts in understandable way. EPD is built according to the ISO LCA –approach and addition-ally according to ISO 14025 for level III environmental declarations. EPD publish and maintain publicly available library for existing EPDs and Product Category Rules (PCR). General Programme Instructions for the International EPD System is the stand-ard to follow when conducting the assessment. Document updating is held every three years to follow the latest information around PCF and LCA methodologies (EPD International AB, 2017).

The fundamental is the same than in other standards but EPD built the guidelines around the PCRs. PCR is a group of products that are similar in terms of functions and every group has a common rule for calculating the environmental impacts of products.

PCR development is the first step of EPD® system after the demand of environmental information by stakeholder as seen in figure 5. PCR development offer guidelines based on LCA methodology and complementary rules to conduct EPD for certain prod-uct category. This includes all the relevant environmental aspects of the prodprod-uct during the lifecycle. If there is no applicable PCR available on EPD database, new category must be developed. This is always done by PCR Committee, led by PCR moderator.

After the PCR is launched, other organizations may use the same PCR when conduct-ing the assessment for products within the same category. Therefore, the process must

be transparent, participatory and in accordance with good internationally accepted manner. PCR is valid for 3-5 years [29].

Figure 5. EPD process flow adapted from (EPD International AB, 2017) Conducting EPD will follow after PCR is done and include following steps: LCA study based on PCR, information gathering to the EPD report, verification and registration and publication. After PCR Committee creates the appropriate LCA structure (bounda-ries, functional unit etc.) performing company will conduct the assessment in-house or with external consultant and compile the data for EPD® System verification. LCA ap-proach is mainly focused on full cycle but standard states that cradle-to-gate –ap-proach is possible for intermediate products or when the use of the product is un-known. Even the detailed LCA structure is identified on PCR –stage, the general guid-ance provides well defined system boundaries and cut-off rules. LCA stages are di-vided in three main processes and all the aspects that should be included in every pro-cess is listed in standard. Similarly, with PAS 2050, EPD also allows 95 % accuracy on total emission and exclude all emissions that are 1 % or less from total amount [29].

Data requirements are in line with other standards but with the different terminology.

figure 6 represents the relevancies between system boundary processes and minimum data requirements. Specific data (primary data) should be used every time it is availa-ble but at least from core processes, which is on-site manufacturing and data can be measured. Generic data is applicable from upstream- and downstream processes if these are not in direct control of the company. EPD slice generic data in two catego-ries: Selected generic data and proxy data. Both are collected from commonly available databases where first one has specified criteria. Latter one is used if the data cannot

fulfil generic data requirements. Emissions from proxy data is limited to maximum 10 % of the total emission of the product. PCR sets the target for data quality, which com-pany shall declare in the report (EPD International AB, 2017).

Figure 6. EPD LCA stages and data requirement (EPD International AB, 2017)

Once EPD is developed, results will be verified before publishing by EPD certified sur-veyor or accredited certification organization. If company conducts EPDs in larger scale, company may apply process certification, which allow them to prepare and issue new EPDs for registration to database. Report of the EPD is mandatory when conduct-ing the assessment and it should follow guidelines of the ISO 14020 –standard. Ones the whole process is done, the results will be published and communicated to stake-holders. International EPD® system offers logotype, certain labelling to all material re-lated to the product under assessment. This is not requirement but highly recom-mended to avoid confusing to other climate declarations or labels.

2.5.4 ISO 14067

The most recognized standard provider International Standards Organization have de-veloped Greenhouse gases. Carbon footprint of products. Requirements and guide-lines for quantification in 2013, which has been revised in 2018 and will be revised every 5 years. ISO-14067 is part of the ISO-14060 standard family, which is compre-hensive standard package for monitoring, reporting and validating GHG emissions and removals. In addition to this, standard is based on ISO 14044 as others and also sup-ported by other guidance for appropriate communication of carbon footprint. Figure 7 describes the relations on how company may utilize ISO-standards in case of carbon footprint. Terminology in ISO 14067 varies slightly as product carbon footprint is turned

to “carbon footprint of product” and therefore shortened to CFP. If partial life cycle will be conducted for product under review, term declared unit is used instead of functional unit.

Figure 7. ISO -standards relationship to ISO 14067 (International Standards Organization, 2018)

Similarly, to EPD, this standard tends to take advantage of PCRs created according to ISO/TS 14027. If PCR exist for unit under assessment, it must be adopted for CFP analyses. If no relevant PCR exist, rules on this standard will be followed (International Standards Organization, 2018).

ISO divides data quality to three categories: Site-specific-, primary- and secondary data. Practically site-specific data is primary data but not the other way around be-cause primary data is allowed to be collected from different product system, but it has to be comparable. Site-specific data should be collected from processes, which are op-erationally or financially under company’s control. Also, data from the most important processes shall be site-specific even if those are not on company’s control. Most im-portant processes contribute minimum 80 % of the emissions. Secondary data are all data that cannot fulfill the requirements of primary data, similarly than in other stand-ards (International Standstand-ards Organization, 2018).

Cut-off criteria is not determined in detailed level and it is on company’s responsibility, which processes are significant, and which are not. Obviously, it is advisable that every process is included but in practice, this might be impossible. For this, company may

conduct sensitive analysis for the processes that are questionable. Cut-off can be intro-duced on goal and scope definition –section and should be mentioned on final report.

One clear exclusion is capital goods, which won’t be included in the assessment if they don’t play significant role on the results. ISO –standard also give comprehensive guid-ance for reporting but don’t require it. Calculations are conducted like in other stand-ards by using the GWP of 100 years (International Standstand-ards Organization, 2018).