Guide to PAS 2050 How to assess the carbon ... - Aggie Horticulture

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Section I: Start-up
Who should be involved?
In a larger organisation internal participants could
include, where applicable, representatives from:
• Senior management
• Environment/corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• Marketing/communications
• Production
• Procurement/supply chain
• Logistics
• Energy
• Finance/performance management
• Analysts1 who will lead the carbon footprint
calculations
1
Many companies hire third-party consultants to perform the
product carbon footprinting analysis. The decision depends on
weighing internal resource availability and expertise against the
costs of an external provider.
It is useful to assemble this team for a series of
introductory and scoping workshops to discuss these
and other start-up issues as described below.
Key considerations during start-up phase
• Why product carbon footprinting? What are the
objectives and expected outcomes?
• Based on these objectives, what criteria should be
set for product selection?
• What products could meet those criteria?
• Who are the key supplier contacts?
• What resources and budget can be given to the
project?
– e.g. external consultants vs. in-house resources
and expertise
• What governance/decision making structure will
guide the project?
• How long will it take?
• Who is responsible for what, and what will they
deliver?
Product carbon footprinting does not require a fulltime
commitment from all stakeholders, but rather:
• initial agreement on the objectives,
• input throughout the process (e.g. help with data
collection), and
• discussion of results and next steps
The level of commitment depends on the individual’s
role and the complexity and/or number of products
selected for carbon footprinting.
Agreeing the objectives will help determine the size of
the ongoing project team. If the goal is to test the
method on one product but eventually roll it out to
others, then it may be more effective to involve a wider
set of people across the organisation – and supply
chain – from the beginning. Similarly, if more than one
product is to be tested this may impact on how the
data is collected and formatted. It could be prudent to
standardise your data collection methods and analysis
in order to allow consistency in the way you present
results.
Choosing products
When choosing products to footprint, it helps to set
overarching criteria based on goals for the project,
and then to identify which products best meet those
criteria. Product selection criteria should fall directly
from the objectives agreed at the beginning of the
project, and are a key component of defining the
scope – how many products, types of product, different
sizes of product, etc.
Key questions to consider when selecting products
include:
• Which products are likely to yield the largest
emission reduction opportunities?
• Which comparisons are most relevant to the
company’s GHG reduction strategy? For example,
comparisons across:
– Product specifications
– Manufacturing processes