Objectives
This project will develop an emissions calculator for a product which is transported through the supply chain. The goals are:
- Quantify the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of product delivered at the destination of the supply chain, for example per kg of fruit or unit of equipment received. This include both the embedded emissions of the product itself, the emissions of the supply chain, and loss of product in the supply chain.
- Compare different supply chain options to see their emissions impact. For example,
- Is it better to ship produce by air or sea freight?
- Is it better to refrigerate it during shipping to reduce the spoilage?
- Is it better to compress CO2 captured during carbon capture and storage (CCS) during pipeline transport?
- Make it possible to compare different products at the destination through different supply chains. For example,
- Is it better to transport the recycled plastics to a facility that could make new bottles from them, or use them at a local recycling facility that turns them into lower value products. While the calculator does not include emissions from downstream usage, it could be used to calculate the emissions of different products through different supply chains at the destination to determine which option is better.
The calculator could be run as simulation for analysis and baselines or used to record actual activities to calculate real emissions. It will integrate the upstream emissions of the products with the emissions of the supply chain, such as transportation, storage, and processing, to enable a true comparison. The end result is the emission of the product plus its transportation and logistics divided by units of products delivered at destination.
Sample Supply Chains
Fruit and Produce: Fruit and produce is harvested at a farm, transported by truck, processed at a distributor facility, shipped by freight (air, truck, or rail) with refrigeration, and delivered to a grocery store or supermarket. Optionally we can consider storage at the grocery store or supermarket as an additional step in the supply chain to the final consumer.
Recycled Plastis: Recycled plastics is collected at residential homes, public places, beaches, etc. It is could then be transported and delivered to different types of facilities, which could then enhance it into different materials.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): GHG emissions are captured at the point of burning natural gas, for example at a power plant, and transported via pipeline to underground storage. What's interesting here is that the product transported has very high GHG emissions content relative to the transport process itself.
Implementation
Hyperleger Fabric with multiple members from the supply chain.
The steps of the supply chain is simplified for emissions accounting purposes, recording:
create a network for decarbonizing a Supply Chain, which could span multiple parties across industries and countries. It will include an emissions ledger to record emissions data, a DAO for collectively deciding on decarbonization options, and a tokens network for transferring the emissions reductions (decarbonization) across the members of the network.
| Widget Connector | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Use Cases
Decarbonization of supply chain, or Scope 3, emissions remains a hard problem for many reasons, even as regulatory compliance, such as the EU carbon border tax, the EU Carbon Boarder Adjustment Mechanism targeting imports of energy intense commodities, make it increasingly important. Our solution offers the following advantages:
- Cost of carbon foot-printing - We're free.
- Creating incentives for suppliers - Customers, either big ones or a group of small ones, could set up their own "cap and trade" scheme: Declare their supply chain emissions targets which decline over time, aligning with the Paris Agreement (-50% by 2030, zero by 2050.) Allocate tokens to suppliers based on those targets. Suppliers can trade their emissions with each other but over time must reduce them as a whole.
Providing turnkey solutions - Again using tokens, major customers could either invest in emissions projects directly and provide them to their customers (like Apple and "Enabling carbon neutrality across the value chain" in this article) or provide financing or guarantees for financing for suppliers.
- Verification - Could be done through this ledger.
- Going deep - Suppliers could get their suppliers on the ledger, and tokens could be transferred further up the supply chain.
- Address the pain points, needs and interests of emerging regulations like the CBAM on the international stage
- Communicate the importance of corporate carbon reduction efforts
Implementation
Information from a variety of sources, from freight bills of lading (BOL's) and carrier tracking information, to mobile and IOT devices attached to vehicles, will be compared against published emissions factors to determine the emissions from transportation.
Product emissions databases can be used to determine the emissions of the component products.
The calculated emissions are either recorded on Hyperledger Fabric or encrypted and recorded on IPFS.
Tokens are then issued using the Emissions Tokens Network. Transportation and shipping emissions are calculated based on standard emissions factors such as the UK Government Greenhouse Gas Reporting Factors (see below) and stored as Audited Emissions. The CarbonTracker tokens from the Oil & Gas Methane Emissions Reduction Project will be used to calculate the actual carbon emissions of fuel based on the producer it was purchased from. This is done by calculating the carbon intensity implied by the standard emissions factors and comparing it against the CarbonTracker tokens' fuel carbon intensity. By presenting an Audited Emissions tokens based on the standard emissions factors and a CarbonTracker token for actual fuel purchased, the smart contract will calculate the difference and issue an additional Audited Emissions token. This new token represents the adjustment for actual emissions based on the purchased fuel's carbon intensity, versus the "average" carbon intensity of the standard fuel. It may be a positive or negative number, depending on the actual purchased fuel's carbon intensity versus the average.
The Decarbonization DAO will govern the auditing and calculation of the carbon intensity of the different producers' fuels, validation of sustainability attributes of different fuels, and any carbon offsets in addition to direct emissions reductions.
References
- UK - Government Greenhouse Gas Reporting Factors: 2021, 2020, and 2019
- France - Resource centre for greenhouse gas accounting
- USA -
- Searates distance and time calculator for transport or similar
- Ecoinvent database or similar
- Reformation RefScale methodology contains information about textile supply chain emissions calculations
- Blockchain Mechanism for Tracking GHG Emissions through Supply Chain
Examples
Apple Supplier Clean Energy Program
IKEA Supplier Renewable Energy Program
Development - Active Issues
| Github issues macro | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...