The long-awaited PAS2050 is the first official system for assessing a product’s carbon footprint, but it doesn’t make it any easier for businesses to work out the numbers

Companies for the first time have an official yardstick to work out the carbon footprint of their products, says the British Standards Institution (BSI), Defra and the Carbon Trust.

The long-awaited carbon footprint specification, PAS2050, provides the methodology to calculate a product’s carbon footprint from “cradle to grave” – which means the emissions of all greenhouse gases at every stage of the supply chain, from sourcing, production and storage to retail and disposal.

BSI developed the footprinting guidelines, commissioned by Defra and the Carbon Trust, in consultation with 72 businesses, including carbon labelling pioneers such as Pepsico and Boots.

Incentives for business

In an interview with ClimateChangeCorp, a spokesperson from the UK’s new Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) recommended that companies use the guidelines to locate carbon intensive “hotspots” in their supply chain.

DECC also hopes that PAS2050 will help firms get the climate change message across to customers – for example, by recommending microwave rather than oven cooking, or washing at 30C rather than at 40C – and to stakeholders, by increasing climate change reporting transparency. The guidelines will make it easier for “all companies, not just the leaders on green strategy” to calibrate carbon savings for a green programme or product, according to DECC.

Recent discussions in parliament about amendments to the UK Companies Act included talk about the introduction of mandatory emissions reporting for businesses. DECC confirms, however that such an amendment would only cover direct emissions reporting - calculating the carbon footprint of companies’ products will remain voluntary. It is hard to legislate for the supply chain, DECC’s spokesperson explains, as “a lot of manufacturing is done abroad, outside UK jurisdiction”.

Nonetheless, companies may become increasingly interested in monitoring carbon emissions in their supply chain as cap-and-trade systems – such as the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment, due to start in 2011, and the currently operating EU Emissions Trading Scheme – start to hit the bottom line in the heavy industry, manufacturing, retail and tourism sectors.

Measure for measure

DECC maintains that PAS 2050 is simple enough to be used by companies in-house. “A product’s carbon footprint is not something you need a PhD to calculate anymore. We’ve broken it down to make it more easily accessible,” the spokesperson says.

Yet some of the replies from industry representatives during the specification’s consultation period were scathing, with one senior figure commenting that only a handful of people in the UK would be able to use the standard accurately.

Euan Murray, director of strategy at the Carbon Trust, insists that calculating a carbon footprint can be done cheaply. “Continental Clothing, an eco-friendly clothing company worked with us over a two-week period and then outsourced their carbon footprinting work to a masters student. It doesn’t have to be expensive”, says Murray.

In contrast, Walkers had to work for three months with the Carbon Trust to audit one packet of crisps. “But after that it took two weeks to work out the other flavours and pack sizes,” adds Murray.

However, the more intricate a product becomes, the trickier the job. Murray admits that working out the footprint from an apple is a far cry from that of a mobile phone, a view reflected by the electronics industry. Climate leader HP won’t touch product carbon footprinting, opting instead to ask its direct suppliers to report energy-related carbon emissions to them via the Carbon Disclosure Project’s corporate supply chain programme.

Michael Gell, director of carbon consultancy Xanfeon, warns companies intending to put PAS2050 to use that “there are many pitfalls for the unwary”.

“[PAS2050] does provide a framework to guide people in their thinking about mapping processes and supply chains and identifying emissions”, he explains. “But, just because someone has that framework doesn’t mean that the task has become easy.”

Firstly a product’s carbon footprint will change every time a there is an alteration in the supply chain, which can make accurate footprinting a constant and laborious process.

But the biggest problem many companies will encounter will be the gaps in their carbon data. “Carbon footprinting is like detective work – tracking down all the bits of the supply chain and business process jigsaw,” Gell says. “Very often one comes up against non-cooperation in different parts of the supply chain.”

Where companies are unable to gather data in the supply chain, Murray recommends using “published data” to fill the gaps. “The Carbon Trust is working to aggregate the data sources,” he says. At the moment only the Carbon Trust’s customers can access the data it holds.

Whilst an increasing number of industry groups are publishing carbon data, Gell warns that accurate published data from developing countries, where much of the manufacturing sector resides, is extremely hard to find. He speculates that GHG emissions from companies in China may be five times that of equivalent companies in the EU, so using EU-based data would not give realistic results.

However, generic carbon data can help companies understand where the “hotspots” are in their supply chain – for example, by comparing EU carbon data on steel to, say, Defra’s data on transport emissions. Both the International Aluminium Institute and the International Iron and Steel Institute have run carbon footprints of their materials. A business might also compare published data in order to “ecodesign” their products. Gell says that recycled aluminium, for example, has only a 20th of the carbon footprint of the virgin metal.

Getting a carbon label

If, despite the obstacles, a company manages to produce an accurate carbon footprint, it will need to consult the Carbon Trust before giving the product an official carbon label. The Carbon Trust also requires companies to commit to reducing their product footprint over a two-year period, before awarding the label.

DECC is wary of linking the footprinting standard to carbon labels, saying that labelling is “just one outcome” of PAS2050. The DECC instead touts the benefits for companies using the guidelines internally.

It’s not a standard – yet

PAS2050 is a “Publicly Available Specification”. This means that it is a government guideline for measuring a carbon footprint, rather than a carbon footprinting standard.

Indeed, some uncertainty exists about the global standardisation of product footprinting methodology, as other countries start to develop their own product carbon labels. Carbon labels are imminent in both France and Japan, and product eco-labelling is being discussed in the EU.

An ISO international standard on carbon footprinting is in the pipeline, according to BSI. “We have put forward PAS2050 as a guideline to base the ISO standard on; the hope is that they will base their standard on ours,” says a BSI spokesperson. Yet it remains unclear how long this will take, and if the ISO standard will become the preferred standard used by governments when it is eventually released. <

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