Development and Verification of Overall Carbon Management
Objective: Workshop(s) will be held to develop a definition and usable, consistent and comparable approach to calculate and verify how manufacturers can present their carbon footprint. The results should be consistent with any and all protocols, future regulations, and/or assay requirements.
Narrative: New federal regulations governing carbon emissions appear likely in the near future. The intent is to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon emissions. Rumors suggest the regulations will cover facility carbon emissions within a business boundary and future yearly reduction targets. No matter the regulatory form, carbon quantity calculation most likely will be required for compliance. Hence, accurate, repeatable data and verifiable reduction strategies will be necessary.
In addition to potential regulatory changes, a grass roots effort has begun to ask for carbon foot printing information for products and services. As a result, a voluntary carbon market complete with protocol(s), trading exchange(s), and estimated carbon values has been formed. Some companies have begun working in this market to provide carbon product and corporate information to meet these requests. In addition, they have begun using solicited third party verifiers to assay their claims. The concept is sound, however, the absolute results might vary because this is still a voluntary market with many interpretations of multiple protocols at play.
A thorough understanding of individual facilities and their entire supply chain carbon emissions will be required to answer these requests. This knowledge will be beneficial for both the individual company as well as the chemical industry as a whole. Generating this information before regulatory action takes place allows practice gathering, calculating, and planning carbon emissions strategy.
How can these early adopters be guaranteed that their voluntary carbon emissions information is accurate when the calculation protocol is still interpretive? Which protocol should be followed, what are the boundaries, will carbon reporting become part of my existing air quality permit, and so on? This project will address these and many other issues surrounding carbon emission calculations in a collaborative format.
There are many steps needed to determine carbon neutrality of a process, product, business unit, corporation, and/or supply chain. These steps include setting boundaries, calculating the carbon footprint within those boundaries, identify where in the process, or what can be offset; evaluation of methodology for reducing carbon footprint (e.g. efficiency improvement, fuel switching, installation of new process technology, etc.), then evaluation of the offset opportunities (cost benefit and must a full suite of sustainability metrics to minimize unintended consequences and the credibility of the source of an offset), calculation the degree of neutrality (footprint minus offsets).
These steps need to be evaluated and consensus built by users on the methodologies to be used in each step. Groups such as the Global Footprint Network, WBCSD/WRI, EPA, and CCX all have recognized methods for establishing footprints and offsets. The consensus building would focus on integrating existing methodologies into a complete decision framework. Note that the existing methodologies only capture parts of the over all steps; no one overall approach has been established to date.
Many issues will be discussed with the group. Some examples include but not limited to, confidentiality, accuracy, ownership, repeatability, double counting elimination, flexible reporting to anticipate format compatibility, and so on. The anticipation of possible regulatory changes from the new Obama administration expedites importance of this review.
Doing the above enable companies to provide consistent and comparable results of their carbon footprint and reductions. In addition, they will be able to evaluate new technologies, approaches, processes, packaging, etc. as to the impact of the new material to their existing carbon footprint.
The process will be able to be used in the eventual regulatory framework that will either require cap and trading of carbon and/or taxes on carbon.
Approach: A cross section of the CSTP membership and others experienced with carbon calculation will be solicited for participation and feedback. It’s hopeful that this cross section will represent many diverse sectors including research and development, manufacturing, service, facilities, power, etc. It’s hoped that group diversity will provide broader perspective and improved gap analysis.
A prioritized focus will be undertaken. The objective is to identify any issues specific to manufacturing/process operations, research and development, administrative facilities, etc. In addition, methods for carbon sequestration will be discussed in order to understand reduction strategies. Will this be process/equipment related, renewable energy credits, offset projects and so on? How will these strategies be chosen and how will they be counted?
Schedule and Outcomes: Experience with these voluntary guidelines will be solicited in workshop format from the AIChE membership. The near term goal (2009) is;
1. 2nd quarter - Identify the carbon calculation techniques currently in use and to identify any perceived limitations of said technique.
2. 2nd quarter - Identification of gaps that need to be filled prior to a regulated market.
3. 3rd quarter - Dissemination of the results of findings and solicit feedback from stakeholders (NGOs, users, regulators, etc.) for carbon calculation. A workshop will be convened to discuss results.
Once completed, it is anticipated that the next set of outcomes (2010) could be completed;
1. A consensus on carbon calculation evaluation and methodology and scorecard.
2. Developing a research agenda to fill gaps
3. Identification of the need for and approach for possible verifications of the resulting “carbon management system” and/or certification of carbon impacts of new technologies.