Energie- en CO2-besparing door elektronisch ... - Rijksoverheid.nl

TNO-rapport | 35175 | april 2010 5 / 34Global Warming Potential (CO2)(10,000,000 invoices)600500ton CO2400300200TransportElectronicsPaper1000PaperDigitalFigure 2 CO 2 emissions of paper invoicing versus digital invoicing, for B2G.In practice 30% of digital invoicing incidences are done without printing and withautomatic payment. In the remaining 70% of the incidences the digital invoices areprinted and are paid for manually using a PC. In the latter case double bookkeepingoccurs (digital and hardcopy). With more opportunities for automatic payments anddigital approval processes, the energy use and CO 2 emissions could decrease by asmuch as two-thirds.The 10 million invoices sent by businesses to the government (B2G) amount to energysavings of 3 TJ and almost 200 tonnes of CO 2 , which is comparable to the gas use of 55Dutch households or the CO 2 emissions of 20 Dutch residents.The relative magnitude of the results hardly changes when invoices contain 5 pages instead of 1.The volume of sent B2G invoices is relatively small compared to the other types,especially the invoices sent from Business to Consumer (B2C). The total annual volumeof invoices sent in the Netherlands is a factor 350 greater than those sent from B2G.Assuming that transitioning to e-invoicing has similar savings for all invoicing types – aseemingly conservative assumption – switching to digital invoicing for all invoicingtypes would have energy savings of approximately 1 PJ and a CO 2 emission savings ofalmost 70 ktonnes. In relative terms, this would be equivalent to the gas usage of 20,000Dutch households of the CO 2 emissions of 700 Dutch residents.