The Bits to Energy Lab is developing concepts and prototypes for automated carbon accounting in the supply chain via Auto-ID technologies (B2B) and for product carbon footprint visualization on mobile phones (B2C). Moreover, the lab is investigating how companies can adapt their business processes to integrate material environmental indicators into their procurement decisions.

Working group

Ali Dada and Thorsten Staake

Abstract

The carbon footprint of products is emerging as an important indicator for the economic and environmental sustainability of supply chains. Companies are increasingly using this measure to learn where in the value chain they can most easily and cost-efficiently reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Pressure from major consumer segments and upcoming governmental legislation are adding to the internal pressure to account for product-level environmental impact. Companies have an opportunity to leverage supply chain tracking technologies to simplify the currently costly and time-intensive carbon accounting process. Once the product environmental impact is automatically monitored, significant optimization opportunities become transparent for companies to implement them. These opportunities can be integrated into the daily business operations, e.g. procurement and logistics management, to achieve continuous improvement across the supply chain. This will represent a major improvement from the status quo where business users take decisions across the value chain, from product design to disposal, without the ability to compare – within the respective information systems – the environmental impact of alternative decisions. Additionally, retailers can use the emission and energy-related data to offer environmentally-aware consumers value-adding services that directly address their information needs at the retailer premises or at home.

Description

The Carbon Accounting project of the Bits To Energy lab investigated the suitable carbon management approaches and developed concepts based on supply chain tracking technologies that enable “dynamic” emission calculation (B2B) and communication (B2C). We built a prototypical implementation of the concept that leverages the EPC Network, augmenting it with vehicle tracking logic which is crucial for determining environmental impact. Our approach enables a more accurate, automated, and timely calculation of carbon footprints, in addition to communicating them dynamically to consumers via their mobile phones.

Currently, the project is focusing on a material and component procurement across the supply chain as a particular business function with a high carbon optimization potential. Today’s business information systems do not show procurement decision-makers across the product value chain the environmental impact of their decisions, let alone provide the capability to evaluate alternatives with respect to these impacts. This shortcoming has direct consequences on concealing environmental optimization opportunities because the user is not presented with the impact of each alternative. The Bits to Energy lab is working together with leading companies in the consumer products and high-tech industries to investigate how companies should adapt their sourcing and procurement processes to integrate carbon as an additional decision parameters. In addition to specifying the business concepts, our research is investigating the enabling system approaches and the feasibility of the whole concept.

Contact

If you are interested in Carbon Accounting, please contact Ali Dada ().