A client makes flour that is then used by other companies to make biscuits, cakes etc. This implies downstream ‘processing of product’ emissions. I’m unsure how to make a reasonable estimate of this, and intend to ask the client in the longer-term to engage with customers to understand better, with a view to the potential for improving the product so that it requires less energy of the customer. I’d welcome any comments, suggestions if others have tackled this?
Hi Simon,
You could try the following:
Find out the key (e.g. top 10) products that their flour will be processed into (e.g. mainly “baked goods” such as bread, etc.). You could then look for an EF of “bread” and dissect it into 2 parts:
- cradle to farm gate
- farm gate to processing gate
You would then only apply the processing emissions to the amount of flour sold and would obtain emissions for the production of bread (without double counting the farm-level emissions). This is a rough estimate of course and you could go even deeper into the EF and also split our individual inputs, such as “milling”, to not double count for the processing of the flour. And of course this still comes with limitations, where it is assumed that 1kg of flour = 1kg of bread
If you have access to the EF database of your choice in e.g. OpenLCA, you can easiy go into the detail of an EF and dissect it as described above. Beyond that you could make adjustments to the 1kg = 1kg ratio as well.
Alternatively, GHGP and SBTi also allow for Scope 3.10 emissions to be entirely excluded, if the further processing includes too many options to reasonably estimate emissions - however, I would think this might not go through with SBTi in the case of flour (if SBTi is relevant).
Last but not least, it would always be best to get in touch with customers (start with the top 10 by volume) and request downstream PCFs from them. They should be able to provide processing emissions per unit (e.g. per 1kg bread produced).