SAP Sustainability Footprint Management aims to calculate a company's total carbon footprint over a specific period, attribute emissions to manufactured products and corporate overhead, and ultimately achieve a balanced emission level. Footprint calculations can be performed in two different ways:
Calculating Organizational Footprint Inventory
The first option periodically calculates your company's total carbon footprint by including all emissions within the organization, such as those from energy flow models and purchased products. With the current release, the calculation considers GHG Protocol Scope 1 (owned/operated assets), Scope 2 (purchased energy), Scope 3.1 (purchased products/services), and Scope 3 (other manual emissions). Emission balancing ensures that incoming emissions equal outgoing emissions throughout all production stages.
For setting up the monthly calculation, you first need to select the Footprint Inventory Scope, and the matching energy flow model and allocation rules. In a next step you need to provide the following input data:
- Energy Bills, for entering the consumed energy quantity and the respective emissions as provided by the utilities company
- Meter Readings, for entering the information from the meters in your production (possible via in-app editing or via Excel file upload)
- Manual Emissions, for entering the value for manual emissions
When running the calculation, the application leverages the imported master and transactional activity data, the mapped emission factors for purchased products, as well as the energy flow model and allocation rules that have been setup previously, to calculate the footprints.
Calculation Variants
Calculation Variants are specific characteristics defining how your footprint inventory is calculated. Every GHG category is related to a specific calculation method, you can configure calculation methods for Scope 2. A calculation variant is formed by combining two or more calculation methods. The configuration is done in the new Manage Calculation Variants app, here you can create and define multiple variants.
Note
In the Energy Source Footprint Calculation configuration, you can choose between Location-based and Market-based calculation. This is crucial for energy emissions accounting conforming to the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, which requires using both calculation methods.
Calculating Product Footprints
The second option provides quick insights into a plant's product footprints by uploading a Bill of Material (BOM)-like Excel file, excluding incoming emissions from energy flow models or other sources. The template can be downloaded in the application directly and the following information need to be provided:
- Material direction (in or out of production)
- Material role (raw, by product, semi, or main product)
- Material Unit of Measure (e.g. Kilogram or liter)
For both calculation options, business logs are available that provide business messages, such as errors and warnings. More information on the calculation can be found in SAP Help: Using the Calculate Footprints Application.
The Product Footprint Calculation configuration involves two allocation methods: Physical Allocation and Economic allocation. These methods help set the allocation for co-products and by-products according to standards in your industry, and you can use this new app to choose the suitable method for your business needs. The GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard also provides guidance on when to use each method. When selecting Physical Allocation, you can also define if you want to allocate by Base Unit of Measure or Net Weight.
Note
You can decide if you want to include or exclude by-products in your footprint calculation. For details, see SAP Help Portal: Using the Manage Calculation Variants Application.
To apply the configured variants within your GHG Scope 2 calculation, you need to configure the Energy Sources in the Model Energy Flows app accordingly, as described in the previous unit. When initiating the calculation in the Calculate Footprints app, you can then assign the Calculation Variant that you want to use. It is also possible to create organizational or product footprint inventories using both calculation methods and compare the results. This gives you the flexibility to perform calculations in multiple variations as for example needed to fulfill requirements of different standards.