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This is a proposal. Please leave your feedback as comments.

Objectives

This project will develop an emissions ledger which could be used by multiple parties in a supply chain to record emissions data. It could then calculate the net emissions 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.
Quantify the effects of leakage or spoilage or other loss in the supply chain on net emissions and compare that against the emissions of the supply chain itself.
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.

Use Cases

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

url	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNM7V8vQCg4

Use Cases

Decarbonization of supply chain, or Scope 3, emissions remains a hard problem for many reasons, even as regulatory The destination emissions of the products could be used for regulatory compliance, such as the EU carbon border tax, the EU Carbon Boarder Adjustment Mechanism targeting imports of energy intense commodities, and for meeting customers' climate objectives. They could also be used to help investors assess the risk of different products. Finally, by comparing the actual results versus simulations of business-as-usual alternatives, these calculations could be used to prove emissions reduction, certify products as low carbon, and create carbon offsets.Longer term, this calculator plus the Emissions Tokens Network Project could be used to solve the hard problems of reducing emissions in the supply chainmake it increasingly important. Our solution offers the following advantages:

Cost of carbon footprinting 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

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.

International trade of energy intense commodities like aluminum, steel, and cement that make up a large share of global international trade and anthropogenic emissions (>~12%). tracking embodied supply chain emissions of these commodities will be essential in building a market for green commodities with lower carbon footprints.

Implementation

Hyperleger Fabric with multiple members from the supply chain. REST API for access from members. Cactus for integration with outside ledgers (ie trade finance or supply chain ledgers.)

Ethereum tokens are used to store the embedded emissions at origin and destination of the supply chain. This opens up the supply chain to all parties who tokenize their emissions.

Hyperledger Avalon is used to perform the emissions calculations and store them back on Fabric. Fabric is used to record the steps of the supply chain and their emissions impact, but not to calculate the emissions. This allows calculations to be performed by a variety of parties and models.

The steps of the supply chain is simplified for emissions accounting purposes, so that it is a series of steps each recording:

Supply chain ID - a unique identifier which identifies a particular product item, which could in reality be a single physical item or a lot or batch, through the supply chain. This could be used by a supply chain system to find the actual item.
Step ID - automated unique identifier for each step. A supply chain will have many steps each with the same supply chain ID and a unique step ID.
Quantity of item at origin
Type of activity - what happened at this step of the supply chain. Was something shipped? By air, sea, rail, or truck? Was a product compressed, flash frozen, stored in a warehouse?
Activity party - Information about who performed the activity, which would be used to find the right emissions factors.
Amount of activity - how far was the item shipped? How long was it stored?
Previous and next node - link to the previous and next steps for this item by their step ID. Use ORIGIN for previous step if the current step is the origin of the supply chain and FINAL for next step if the current step is the final or destination of the supply chain.
Emissions - calculated emissions of this step based on the type of activity, activity party, and amount of activity. This will require standard emissions factors similar to the ones used in the Utility Emissions Channel Project, but for all the different types of steps in the supply chain. One source could be GHG Protocol's new calculator.

In addition we will need for the supply chain itself:

Per unit embedded emissions of the item at origin - This is the embedded emissions of the item at the origin of the supply chain. It is added to the emissions of the supply chain itself to get the final emissions at destination. This could be an audited emission specific to the item or, if not available, generic emission for this type of item.
Meta information about the supply chain

Services available from the implementation will be able to

Calculate net emissions for a supply chain by adding up all the steps' emissions, plus the emissions of the item at origin.
Tokenize the net emissions per unit of item
Issue tokens back to each segment based their relative contribution

Data sources could come from:

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.