ICIS launches tool to highlight supplier specific scope 3 emissions in chemical and plastics supply chain
Commodity intelligence services provider ICIS has launched Supplier Carbon Footprints to help chemical and plastic companies measure, manage and identify opportunities to reduce global supply chain emissions for chemicals and plastics with emission data by supplier, plant, and product.
Developed in partnership with Carbon Minds, specialists in environmental impact modelling for chemicals and plastics, Supplier Carbon Footprints is set to shine a light into emissions across the whole supply chain for 71 chemicals and plastics, empowering companies to reduce their carbon footprint.
As consumer, investor, and regulatory pressure on industry to reduce its environmental impact continues to intensify, organisations are increasingly looking to understand and reduce their carbon footprint. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD), the upstream and downstream supply chain of chemical companies contributes on average 81% of overall emissions by the industry, with the single largest contributor typically being raw material supplies. Historically, the poor availability and consistency of primary data, or detailed secondary sources, has made it hard to assess emissions and set effective reduction targets.
Alison Jones, Strategy Director at ICIS, explains, “Although there is a lot of focus on capital expenditure for new technologies to reduce emissions, which is great for the future, this tool provides an immediate way to report emissions and identify areas of focus more accurately. Emissions vary dramatically from supplier to supplier, region, and plant, which is not fully reflected in alternative solutions on the market which calculate emissions on a regional or country basis. With Supplier Carbon Footprints, organisations will be able to clearly see the climate impact of their supply chains and accurately measure and compare suppliers’ carbon footprints. Changing just one supplier could make an immediate and significant difference to Scope 3 emissions.”
Arne Kätelhön, Co-founder and CEO at Carbon Minds added, “This is a huge step forward for chemical companies in managing Scope 3 emissions. Supplier Carbon Footprints provides data covering 71 bulk chemicals and plastics which are consumed to produce the vast majority of manufactured goods. It will provide the information to create supply chains with lower climate impacts and find the right suppliers to achieve this goal. Companies will further be able to use the data to engage existing suppliers and assist them to implement sustainability initiatives.”
Jones concludes, “The visualisation of the data via the icis.com interface allows users to easily analyse data for more than 10,000 production plants and determine life-cycle environmental impacts of chemicals and plastics globally. It provides buyers the granularity needed to manage Scope 3 emissions and producers to set targets for reduction of emissions and to benchmark their production against their competition.”
