1 OVERVIEW
Effective decarbonization and ESG measures , today , lack transparency of production information in supply chains . For instance , the common practice for calculating upstream emission values based on life-cycle assessment ( LCA ) databases does not provide actionable and trustworthy product-level emission data .
We developed an IIoT approach to ( i ) collect direct production values from industrial production facilities and ( ii ) request indirect production values from suppliers . The approach addresses the need for data sovereignty and protecting confidentiality of production data using an open ecosystem provided by the ESTAINIUM Association .
The ESTAINIUM Association originated from the need to reduce the adverse impact of industrial production on the environment . It was born as association of members that enables them to share the respective product carbon footprint ( PCF ) along the supply chain in a standardized and trustful way . The technology used not only enables stakeholders to share the PCF but also enables it to be verifiable by the consumer of the product . We call this approach “ Trustworthy Supply Chain Exchange ” ( TSX ) and apply it for PCFs . TSX is a necessity when sharing PCFs as single indicator where results are aggregated from primary data across upstream supply chain . Sharing single indicator results enables suppliers to protect confidential process information , but the resulting limitations in transparency require high trust levels .
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The ESTAINIUM Association is a non-profit , non-governmental organisation of entities that are focused on the common goal of alleviating the impact of industrial production . The major component of production-related emissions is carbon [ 1 ]. Therefore , reducing the production of carbon or compensating its production is imperative to meet the target of cutting emissions by around 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and stay so on track to limit the raise of temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius , according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) [ 2 ].
ESTAINIUM works on the governance level to come up with a roadmap for reducing the impact of industrial production on environment , which is the third biggest carbon emitter after coal-fired power station and traffic . This body of work paved the way for an approach called Trustworthy Supply Chain Exchange ( TSX ), which helps understanding the process of measuring the product carbon footprint ( PCF ). It laid the foundations for a web application that would help manufacturers in sharing their PCF values with their customers in a verifiable manner . To achieve this , TSX utilizes the verifiable credentials ( VC ) technology , which is a World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C ) standard [ 4 ]. We apply TSX on PCF data as single indicator where results are aggregated from primary data across upstream supply chain ( PCF aggregation ).
32 January 2023