Decarbonization of value chains starts with an understanding of the drivers for GHG emissions. For most manufacturing enterprises, the largest portion of such emissions reside in the Scope 3, in other words the emissions embedded in the raw materials. In order to manage Scope 3 effectively, it is crucial to develop solid carbon accounting standards and data exchange mechanisms to enable the proliferation of high-quality and comparable product carbon footprint primary information. For the chemical industry, the organization “Together for Sustainability” has recently issued a Product Carbon Footprint Guideline for chemical and plastics raw materials and working on a data exchange platform to drive standardization.
