PCF World Forum Executive Summary #3 "Product Carbon Footprint Initiatives"

Executive Summary #3

Product Carbon Footprint Initiatives

PCF World Forum Executive Summaries provide quick references to concepts, initiatives and resources at the nexus of products, value chains and climate change.

Intro GHG emissions accrue at all life cycle stages across all sectors. A number of initiatives address GHG emissions in products and value chains. This summary provides an overview of relevant initiatives that aim to reduce GHG emissions through robust quantification (carbon footprinting), communication or climate certification. For simplicity each initiative is included in one of these areas though they may of course be conducive to several. You may also want to check the previous Summaries #1 on “Product Carbon Footprint” and #2 on “Product Environmental Footprint”.

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Quantification initiatives Communication initiatives Climate certification initiatives Other initiatives About the PCF World Forum

Figure 1 Broad categories of PCF initiatives: All aim at reductions of climate/ environmental impacts but apply different overlapping and complementing strategies to achieve them.

1 Quantification initiatives Reducing GHG emissions in product and value chains requires a good and shared understanding of GHG emission sources. Several initiatives contribute to the establishment of rules for their uniform assessment. They differ mostly in their specificity for producing comparable results and their applicability for different forms of communication programmes.  IPCC: IPCC Guidelines for National GHG Inventories and GHG Global Warming Potentials as published by the IPCC in their regular Assessment Reports are the ex-/implicit basis of many GHG assessment methodologies.  GHG Protocol: The joint initiative of World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) produces standards and tools for GHG management, accounting and reporting for stand-alone use or as part of reporting/reduction programmes. Two new standards (GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle and Scope 3) specifically provide a uniform basis for product and value chain carbon footprinting and reporting.  International Organization for Standardization (ISO): As part of a full suite of environmental standards (the ISO 14000 series), ISO has developed general standards for life cycle environmental assessments (ISO 14040/44) and environmental product declarations (ISO 14025). The upcoming standard ISO 14067 “Carbon Footprint of Products” provides specifications for assessment and communication of product related GHG emissions. Current draft version is DIS ISO 14067. The British Standards Institution (BSI) has already published the Publicly Available Specification PAS 2050 and acted as a precursor for GHG Protocol Product Standard and ISO 14067.

Executive Summary #3

Product Carbon Footprint Initiatives

 EU Environmental Footprinting Project: Together with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC IES) DG Environment is developing a harmonised methodology for the comparable quantification of the environmental footprint of products and organisations. The carbon footprint is one component of the overall environmental assessment.

A large number of quantification methodologies are developed for particular product categories and sectors. An introduction will be given in the upcoming Executive Summary on Product Category Rules.

2 Communication initiatives Besides the reporting requirements defined in the above quantification standards a number of communication initiatives exist that organise the exchange of carbon footprint information on a B2B or B2C basis in a consistent way. Communication frameworks need yet reach the maturity achieved in quantification standards.  CDP Supply Chain: The Carbon Disclosure Project is working with companies to extend GHG assessment and reporting to supply chains and regularly publishes the CDP Supply Chain Report.  Environmental Product Declarations: Following the ISO 14025 standard several programmes issue Environmental Product Declarations for products. Many of these programmes are organised within GEDnet.  Carbon Reduction Label (UK): The first carbon footprint label, developed by the UK Carbon Trust, is based on PAS 2050/ GHG Protocol and requires additional specifications (Footprint Expert) by the Carbon Trust as well as a reduction commitment by certified companies. It has been issued for numerous products in different countries.  CFP Japan: In a three year-long Government supported pilot project a carbon footprint label and comprehensive carbon footprint system was developed and applied to more than 550 products.

Focus of the new project phase is communication, education and integration into the existing Japanese ecolabelling scheme.  Korea: After a nine-month long pilot phase in 2009 Korea introduced a carbon label for the certification of a broad variety of products, like cars, appliances and food. The carbon label is complemented by a low carbon label to emphasize climate friendly products.  Thailand: The carbon label and the carbon reduction label were introduced in 2009. Until 2012 already more than 450 products from different sectors carried the PCF label.  France Environmental Footprint Declaration: The Grenelle II law requires environmental information (always including carbon footprint) on products to be made available to consumers.

A national experiment with more than 160 companies producing in or exporting to France has been conducted to test environmental declarations to prepare a decision on the future implementation by parliament.  Product Carbon Footprint Pilot Project Québec: The government of Québec is currently carrying out a pilot project on the carbon footprint labelling of products and exploring possibilities such as Product Category Rules to ensure comparability of results.  Hop Cube Ecological Barometer: Display of environmental information for consumers online, on pack and mobile phones, including information on GHG emissions. Displays information on more than 35,000 products.

Executive Summary #3

Product Carbon Footprint Initiatives

3 Climate certification initiatives To market a product as “climate friendly” more than a carbon footprint is needed. Based on a good understanding of emission sources, demonstrable efforts must have been made to reducing it beyond a commonly agreed threshold. This is usually achieved through the definition of criteria against which a product is certified. Very few climate certification schemes and criteria exist to date.  Svenskt Sigill (Sweden): The Swedish Climate Certification system addresses climate impact of food and defines criteria for different food chains. A climate label is awarded for food products that meet these criteria.  Climatop label: The Climatop label is awarded to products that have significantly lower life cycle GHG emissions than comparable products.  Blue Angel/Blauer Engel (Germany): In the German eco-label scheme a new variant has been introduced which highlights products in certain product categories that “protect the climate” based on defined criteria.  ISCC Plus: The existing sustainability certification system for bioenergy ISCC is extended to include food, feed and biobased materials.  Voluntary climate criteria are introduced in certification schemes originally created for other purposes. Examples are the SAN Climate Module used for Rainforest Alliance certification and the 4C climate module for green coffee production

4 Other initiatives

The above list is of course not complete and there are a number of relevant initiatives that do not fall in one of the clusters yet aim at reducing GHG emissions in products and value chains across sectors.  PCF Pilot Project Germany: Cross-sector and cross-stakeholder collaboration that gathered experience and insights in product carbon footprinting and gave recommendations for quantification and communication. Most transparent carbon footprint documentation of all initiatives.  The Sustainability Consortium: So called “category sustainability profiles” provide a baseline for product sustainability performance in a category, including information on hotspots of GHG emissions. Specific sustainability performance of products is measured against this baseline.  WRAP Product Sustainability Forum (UK): The forum focus lies on identifying environmental hotspots and associated reduction opportunities in product categories for collective action.

5 About the PCF World Forum

The PCF World Forum is a neutral platform for companies and their stakeholders to reflect and act on challenges, practical experiences, initiatives, tools and insights towards climate-conscious value chains.

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