Chemicals industry body Together for Sustainability (TfS) has published an updated version of its Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Guideline to help companies streamline their Scope 3 emissions calculations. TfS is an initiative driven by chemical procurement specialists, with members covering the global chemicals sector.
The chemical industry accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which 77% are covered by Scope 3, and companies are increasingly required to provide detailed and emissions data and share it with the broader supply chain.
TfS said that, since its initial release, the PCF Guideline has been widely adopted by companies within and outside the chemical industry, serving as a ‘drop-in’ means of calculating emissions from chemical materials.
TfS members are chemical companies representing a global annual turnover of over €800 billion and a global spend of more than €500 billion.
The update to the PCF Guideline clarifies definitions and data standards, particularly in areas like waste management, mass balance and carbon capture and utilisation. The group said the changes will make it easier for corporations and their suppliers to generate and report reliable carbon footprint data.
TfS has worked to standardise the PCF Guideline with other frameworks such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s PACT Framework, Catena-X and the Global Battery Alliance. Like the original guidelines, the updated version will be open source to encourage widespread adoption.
Professor Dr Peter Saling, Director Sustainability Methods at BASF and Co-Chair of the TfS PCF Guideline Work Package, said the guideline can create trust and a lot of meaningful and comparable information on PCFs along the whole value chain. “What you cannot measure, you cannot manage - measurement is the basis for everything,” he said.
“Many sectors are now looking for guidelines, because they have to report what their carbon footprints are and what their corporate carbon footprints are. You need to have harmonised approach and rules and the TfS guidelines can be really helpful document for that. Sectors need to have something and they are happy if they do not have to reinvent the wheel,” he said.
TfS has partnered with Catena-X to develop the PCF Verification Framework. This new framework provides best practices for data verification across three levels.
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