Background

Sustainability reports focusing on comprehensive corporate responsibility will become more important in the future. Especially, the production conditions of suppliers and disposers are attracting attention to companies. Therefore, the complete supply chain is in the focus of a company’s climate protection performance. The question is: Is it possible to evaluate the climate efficiency of companies in times of outsourcing and globalisation? For instance, companies can achieve an overall positive climate balance by outsourcing climate damaging processes to pollution havens, even if the climate balance of their products is negative.

Approach

To take this into account, the task of the research project EINBLIK, which is supported by the BMBF, is to develop an indicator in order to sum up the climate intensities of all companies along a supply chain. This indicator does not only measure the climate impact of one product, but also the climate impact of a company’s different sites and the company as a whole. This ability of the indicator distinguishes it from the ordinary method of Life Cycle Assessment. Thus, one can say that the cumulated climate intensity of a company shows the climate protection performance of a company’s output, because the indicators of its suppliers and disposers are incorporated in its own indicator. The indicator of cumulative climate intensities is following a different approach from other concepts that assess climate protection performance. The indicator of every company in the supply chain is calculated in the following way: The climate intensities of all suppliers and disposers of a company multiplied by their share of the company’s turnover and the direct emissions of a company, are set in proportion to the company’s turnover to calculate the indicator. This results in a recursive indicator system in which each supplier and disposer passes merely its climate rucksack along the supply and disposal chain. Every company has to look back one supplier and disposer step. This yields another big advantage for the realisation of the method because the complete data required for the calculation of cumulative emission intensities are available in the companies.

Steps

In the first step, the methodical framework will be determined. This includes the determination of accounting principles, the examination of the data demand, and the approach for international usage and boundary rules. The second step contains the implementation of the method as an operational decision support system. Therefore, the decision models have to be analysed and extended before the method can be integrated in the operational decision process. The last step is the application at the business project partners. The Volkswagen AG will compare the climate efficiency of different sites and factories by cumulative emission intensities, while the Systain Consulting GmbH calculates cumulative emission intensities along an extensive supply chain.

Aims

The aim of the research project is the advancement of the cumulative emissions intensities method in order to apply this concept to all companies in globalised production systems. The application of the indicator system should be independent of the branch and the size of a company. Furthermore, the method should be transferable to other pollutants than CO₂ equivalents and it should also comprise reduction chains. As a result, companies will have an incentive to minimise the climate impact of their complete product range. Thus, the method is sufficient to support a comprehensive corporate responsibility. The cumulative climate intensities offer the opportunity to assess supplier connections on climate relevant emission rucksacks. This will enable companies to establish an integrated supply chain management on climate impacts leading to mitigation of CO₂ emissions. Every company will endeavour after achieving a low indicator value and therefore it will push on this endeavour to its suppliers and disposers. Moreover, mitigation of CO₂ emissions can be achieved by setting target values for the indicator or by installing a mandatory benchmarking system. Furthermore, the indicator provides a new decision criterion because it connects environmental with business data. Therefore, the indicator can be easily applied by decision makers in companies due to the fact that the cumulative emission intensities refer to a concrete operational number and not to numbers from natural sciences, which are not familiar to businessmen.

Project partners

University of Technology Braunschweig
Institute of Economic Sciences
Department of Production and Logistics Management
E-Mail: g.walther [at] tu-bs.de

 

 

Pforzheim University
Institute of Applied Research
Professor of environmental management
E-Mail: mario.schmidt [at] hs-pforzheim.de

 

 

Systain Consulting GmbH
E-Mail: arretz [at] systain.com

 

 

 

Volkswagen AG
Department K-GEFUW
E-Mail: michael.mrowietz [at] volkswagen.de

Contact

Prof. Mario Schmidt
Pforzheim University
Institute of Applied Research
Tiefenbronner Str. 65
D-75175 Pforzheim
Phone: +49(0)7231/28-6406
Fax: +49(0)7231/28-7406
E-Mail: mario.schmidt [at] hs-pforzheim.de
Internet: umwelt.hs-pforzheim.de

Project website