Let’s say a company produces 10 different products. It reports emissions in all scope 3 categories and scopes 1 and 2.
Should emissions from all scopes and categories be allocated to each product produced?
Which scope 3 categories can be allocated to a product and which cannot, and why?
Where does the GHG protocol clearly indicate which categories can be allocated to a product or service?
Thanks in advance for any answers or thinking along!
Mikołaj
i’d go with something along these lines
1.Scope 1 and Scope 2
These are usually allocated to products when those emissions are directly linked to their production, such as direct emissions from owned or controlled sources and indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling. ie: energy use in manufacturing can be allocated to products by production volume, energy intensity, sub metered data on production lines or some measure you can justify
2.Scope 3:
This gets a bit messy, Scope 3 will be a wide-ranging set of indirect emissions from value chain, if you get them. Otherwise will need to use estimates based on materials. Whether these can accurately be allocated to a product depends on the category and the data you can get or assume or measure. ie: the percentage of metal in a product
Allocati9n
these are categories that i think could be allocated…
1:Purchased Goods and Services: obviously you buy stuff to make end product so emissions of production of raw materials and components. can be attributed to a product if specific data on materials or processes is available from suppliers
2: Upstream Transportation and Distribution: Emissions from transporting inputs to production can be allocated based on the share of transportation relevant to each product. if using a decent transport company - otherwise i know a chap who specialises is transport
3: Waste Generated in Operations: If the waste is directly related to specific products, these emissions may be allocated proportionally. Do you collect waste streams per product line?
4: End-of-Life Treatment of Sold Products: This will be possible if there is product-specific data on its disposal or recycling. This is really down to you unless your product goes into something else then your customer may want this data from you one day.
Not usually allocated:
Employee Commuting: Generally, this related to company operations instead of an individual product.
Business Travel: Like employee commuting, these too are not product-specific.
Investments: These are related to financial activities and can rarely be assigned to one product.
Franchises and Leased Assets (Not Operational Control): Not your problem as they are organizational-level emissions and hence not product-specific.