Introducing SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

SAP is in a unique position to jump-start your climate action journey:

• SAP Sustainability Footprint Management builds on existing data in your ERP data in SAP systems to produce unmatched granularity and efficiency in data handling.
• SAP Sustainability Data Exchange builds on connections to six million existing companies within the SAP Business Network.
• SAP's existing lines of business offer many highly relevant use cases for transactional carbon accounting, for example, in procurement or logistics.

With SAP Sustainability Data Exchange, footprints can be shared across the entire supply chain and thus primary data can be leveraged in the emission calculation. The product as well as the interfaces are created in compliance with the methodology and technical specifications for APIs by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Partnership for Carbon Transparency (WBCSD PACT). SAP Sustainability Data Exchange officially confirms to the PACT 2.0 standard (see PACT Catalog).

The inbound integration, collecting supplier footprints and pushing this actual data from SAP Sustainability Data Exchange into SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, is available since 2023. This already supports you in your journey from calculating emissions as aggregated averages based on secondary lifecycle assessment (LCA) data to acting on actual carbon outputs, based on primary supplier information. For more information on the inbound integration, see SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: Q3-23 Updates & Highlights.

On the outbound side, you will soon able to publish product carbon footprints for carbon data exchange with your customers or other stakeholders. This applies to finished and semi-finished products and will also supports the PACT consortium's format for carbon data exchange. The footprints can be shared via an API, they will be published on SAP Business Accelerator Hub, and via SAP Sustainability Data Exchange.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management easily integrates leveraging your ERP data from SAP S/4HANA and other data sources:

Hint

SAP plans an integration with other climate action solutions.

• When used with SAP EHS EM, you can reuse regulatory carbon emission data and environmental material flows, such as water and waste.
• With SAP Sustainability Data Exchange, a new solution, it uses the carbon data interoperability standards established by the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). This effectively shares sustainability information, for example, Catena-X and Confinity-X, the rapidly developing industry data network for the automotive industry.

With SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, you can decarbonize your value chain and quickly get the complete picture of your carbon footprint. The calculations integrate supplier data and existing ERP business data, dramatically improving the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of emissions calculations and management.

The key benefits are:

• RECORD: Easily leverage existing data with seamless integration and automation. Seamlessly integrate data from SAP S/4HANA, third-party data, supplier data, and facility energy flows for data acquisition and footprint distribution.
• REPORT: Get auditable corporate and product carbon footprints at scale. Assess your sustainability footprint with granular cradle to gate carbon footprint calculations that consider materials, transportation, and production.
• ACT: Decarbonize along business processes through granular transparency. Act on your reduction targets with carbon accounting software that supports Scope 1, 2 and 3 transparency, and generates analytical insights from footprint data.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management offers various options to reuse ERP data, including master data and transactional activity data (material movements). It integrates with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA (2021 and later) out of the box, while other ERP systems can be connected through Public APIs. An IT project is necessary for this integration, with SAP services support available. Additionally, data can be imported through flat-file uploads using templates. Freight-transport specific master data entities such as plant or supplier locations can be imported through file upload. The system further offers a starter package, including location information for various transportation hubs and vehicle data for different transport modes.

The following figure depicts the business transactional data entities that are being replicated from the connected source system (such as SAP S/4HANA) to be leveraged in the footprint calculation in Sustainability Footprint Management.

After importing business data from your ERP system, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management helps evaluate the environmental impact of this data by importing and managing emission factors. Here, we focus on climate change impact through global warming potential (GWP) in CO2-equivalents (CO2e).

You can import emission factors through an Excel file from primary sources, which represent actual data directly from your suppliers, or secondary sources, such as lifecycle assessment (LCA) databases, which represent industry averages. SAP partners with Ecoinvent (https://store.sap.com/dcp/en/product/display-0000060184_live_v1/package-of-carbon-footprint-emission-factors) and Carbon Minds (https://store.sap.com/dcp/en/product/display-0000060683_live_v1/carbon-footprint-data-for-chemicals-and-plastics to provide LCA content through the SAP Store. This allows easy import into the application. You can further utilize custom data from your operations or LCA software tools or use estimated proxies for specific materials or activities.

The figure, Import Emission Factors, shows an example of a data set from an LCA package imported into Sustainability Footprint Management. It represents cocoa bean production in Ghana and includes the respective emission factor, data set classifications, and a quality indicator. You can use the emission factor to calculate footprints of cocoa beans purchased from suppliers producing in Ghana.

The application further provides a functionality to map emission factors to your purchased products, based on your imported ERP data, at a different granularity. It auto-generates a mapping template with pre-filled information such as products, commodity codes, and suppliers. You can edit this template in-app or through a CSV file, and associate emission factors to each item through filtering and searching your imported emission factor databases for the best match.

You can now reuse GHG Protocol Scope 1 & 2 emissions from SAP EHS Environment Management in your calculation in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. Through importing direct and indirect emission data, you can calculate corporate and product footprints in a legal and regulatory compliance-driven manner. This integration works out-of-the-box with EHS in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA (2022 & later).

Note

Follow the Integration Guide to perform the setup. Via APIs, publicly available in SAP Business Accelerator Hub, it’s also possible to connect Third Party EHS systems.

The data that is replicated from the EHS system includes master and transaction data. The master data is imported – as usual – via the Import Master Data app and consists of the newly added entities Location (location identifier, location type, and plant) and Emission Management Activity (identifier, activity type, and description). The Plant ID used in Sustainability Footprint Management must be maintained in the plant field of the EHS Environment Management Location. Imported locations are also reflected as Facilities in the Model Energy Flows app and can therefore also be used within your Energy Flow Model directly.

Note

Check the SAP Help Portal to find information on how to prepare your data in SAP EHS Environment Management before the import. For importing master data from Third Party EHS systems, the existing Import Master Data ODATA API has been enhanced by the new data objects accordingly.

The emissions that have been calculated with EHS Emission Management can be replicated as emission transactional data via the new Import Emission Data app. As with other transactional data, this periodic replication is done at a monthly level.

After successful import, the data can be leveraged within the monthly footprint calculation. The emissions are included in the overall organizational footprint results and are visible in the analytical reports.

Note

For more details, see Using the Import Emission Data Application in the SAP Help Portal. For importing emission data from Third Party EHS systems, we published a new API on SAP Business Accelerator Hub that can be used.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management (with the current release) addresses the product life cycle from cradle to gate. This includes upstream emissions from material acquisition, pre-processing, and transport, as well as direct emissions related to own production activities. Reflected on the corporate footprint, it covers the corresponding GHG Scope 1, 2, and 3 categories related to material, freight transport, and facilities.

Note

SAP plans to address downstream emissions in future releases, reflecting the cradle to grave product life cycle.

To define the organizational boundaries of the footprint calculation, you can maintain individual inventory scopes in the system, including companies, plants, and value chain steps. The application uses energy flow models to connect energy-related elements with the resources (such as an assembly line or oven) replicated from the ERP system. This includes energy carriers, energy sources, resources, and infrastructure (meters, process infrastructure, and facilities). These elements can be fully modeled and updated, allowing for the creation of models using a list display or a graphical flow modeler with drag-and-drop functionality:

When a direct energy flow connection is unavailable, you can set allocation rules to distribute emissions to products and GHG Scopes and Categories.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management calculates a company's total carbon footprint and attributes emissions to products and corporate overhead, aiming to achieve a balanced emission level through all production stages.

Two methods are provided:

• Calculating Organizational Footprint Inventories: This method considers GHG Protocol Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. It requires input data such as energy bills, meter readings, and manual emissions. It leverages the imported master and transactional activity data, the mapped emission factors, as well as the energy flow model and allocation rules that previously were set up to calculate the footprints.
• Calculating Product Footprints: This method provides insights into a plant's product footprints by uploading a Bill of Material (BOM)-like Excel file. The calculated footprints can be monitored in an easy-to-read graphical format with drill-down possibilities into main emission drivers.

A Sankey Diagram is the core tool for investigating emission results. It offers transparency on input factors, such as purchased energy. You can explore various levels of detail, including calculation data and formulas, to understand the carbon footprint emissions. The app enables you to publish results to connected SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA systems.

You calculate inbound and outbound transport footprints by uploading .csv files containing transport information. To determine emissions, the application uses client-specific routes or automated calculation logic based on distances. Data is validated and feedback is provided for any issues. The Calculate Transport Footprints - Lite app enables quick calculations and assessments for single shipments without importing data, with results visualized in charts, tables, and maps. With this, you can quickly compare emissions related to different transport mode choices (for example, planes versus trains). It also helps your company make informed decisions on how to reduce your transport-related carbon footprint.

In the app, you can select footprint inventories to publish calculated product footprints into SAP S/4HANA for displaying and integrating into your end-to-end processes. If you want to publish only selected information, it’s also possible to filter on certain products, plants, or other criteria.

To analyze calculated footprints and to gain new insights, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management offers built-in analytics. Through various dashboards, you can analyze your corporate balance with all emission inflows and outflows, as well as your emissions per purchased and sold products and energy consumers. You can also drill down into emissions by GHG scope, category, and energy source, and view trends.

For transport footprints, there are own dynamic dashboards available with highly customizable charts and detailed reports on various transport relevant KPIs. You can also visualize and analyze inbound and outbound transport flows and emissions on a world map, including a heatmap to display emission hotspots. To incorporate calculated footprints into your preferred analytical application, such as SAP Analytics Cloud or non-SAP solutions, use the OData API from API Business Hub.

This includes integrating the calculated footprints into the end-to-end business processes and providing transparency and insights into sustainability metrics. The metrics are not only for sustainability experts in central sustainability departments but all business users in the company and its respective lines of business.

From SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, you can publish the footprints into the connected SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA (2021 and later) system. This makes the information accessible to users, enabling them to incorporate these criteria into their decision-making processes. To integrate footprints into business processes, you can use Key User Extensibility.

In Purchasing, product footprints are integrated into a Purchase Requisition (PR). This allows approvers and operational purchasers to assess a PR's environmental impact. The Monitor Purchase Requisition Items app provides insights into current and future emissions, enabling proactive optimization of the environmental footprint.

Another integration of footprints is available in Inventory Management, starting with the Stock - Multiple Materials app to provide insights into the environmental impact of stocks. Previously used for stock quantities and financial values, the app now allows for sustainability criteria in decision-making processes.

Note

Integration of footprints is also available in SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP). It enables users to track greenhouse gas emissions according to supply planning heuristic results. Furthermore, the first data sharing use case leveraging the SAP Business Network is available, by integrating footprints into Logistic Business Network – Material Traceability (LBN-MT).

Through the integration with SAP Sustainability Control Tower, corporate footprints that are calculated with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management can now also be integrated into the overall sustainability reporting and used for company-wide holistic ESG reporting and steering.

After running the periodic footprint calculations in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, you can now determine which of the results you want to communicate. In the Manage Footprint Communication app, you can select one or more footprint inventory scopes and specify the calculation variants that you want to make available. The footprints always represent corporate footprints, aggregated at plant level. .

Note

Check out the SAP Help Portal for all details: Using the Manage Footprint Communication Application

In SAP Sustainability Control Tower, you first need to ensure that the plants from Sustainability Footprint Management are maintained as Business Locations with matching IDs. Next, you can trigger the replication of the communicated footprint results via the Manage ESG Data app. Here you specify the time window and validate and publish the footprint results. After successful publishing, the footprints are available as Actuals in the Insights KPI tiles and for steering in the Our Ambition app. They’re further accessible in the View Emission Dashboard.

Watch this video to learn how this is done between the two systems

The figure, Key Takeaways, summarizes the key product capabilities of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management.