Framework for carbon footprint analysis of Scope 3 emissions

Abstract

To accelerate actions towards the goal of the Paris Agreement, new greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets have been set by the European Union and Norway towards achieving climate neutrality by 2050. As a result, new legislation has been formulated forcing the industry to shift to more sustainable practices and innovative technologies aligning their portfolio with the climate goals. Acknowledging these changes, companies have started quantifying the global warming potential impact of their value chains (Scope 3) as GHG emissions from the value chain can make up the majority of a company’s carbon footprint in most sectors.

As part of their Scope 3 emission management strategy, Equinor is addressing the GHG emissions of their supply chain. To this end, quantification of the GHG emission profile of the products and goods that they purchase is necessary. This project aims to propose a framework intended to facilitate the calculation of the GHG emission profile of purchased goods. The methodology of this project includes an exploratory research approach and a case study in which the GHG emission profile of additively and conventionally manufactured products are compared by implementing the proposed framework. The results of this work confirm that collecting data from suppliers and thus developing a data inventory to calculate the carbon footprint of a supply chain imposes the main challenge. To solve this, Equinor might consider requesting Environmental Product Declarations for products with a high GHG emission profile and/or request that suppliers participate in programs designed for gathering and exchanging GHG emissions data. A calculator based on Excel spread sheets was developed to compare the carbon footprint of additive and conventional manufacturing. The results indicated that additive manufacturing (AM) has a larger global warming potential impact than conventional manufacturing. However, this result may be offset since AM can potentially reduce emissions associated with raw material extraction and processing if AM is used to optimize the durability of products manufactured conventionally.