Managing Emission Factors

Emission data for purchased products are the basis of carbon footprint calculations for manufactured products. You can maintain this emission data in the Manage Purchased Product Footprints app. The categorization of emission data is based on the standards of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Note

Additional information about the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) is a widely used standard to categorize emissions. It establishes a comprehensive, global, standardized framework for measuring and managing emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains, products, cities, and policies.

The GHGP is a partnership between the World Resource Institute (WRI) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Resources_Institute) and the Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Business_Council_for_Sustainable_Development). It provides accounting and reporting standards, sector guidance, calculation tools, and training for businesses and government.

To evaluate the environmental impact of acquired business data and to calculate footprints at scale, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management offers the capability to import and manage emission factors. The application focuses on the climate change impact, representing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) measured in CO2-equivalents (CO2e). You import the emission factors into the application through Excel file upload and you can collect them from different sources:

• Preferably, you use primary, actual footprint data that you receive directly from your suppliers.
• Currently, suppliers are frequently unable to provide this data. Companies mostly rely on secondary emission factors, representing industry averages, taken from lifecycle assessment (LCA) databases.
  Note

  SAP has partnerships with LCA content providers 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). Through the SAP Store, you can license their databases. You receive them in the required format for importing them into SAP Sustainability Footprint Management.
  
• Other options include leveraging custom data collected during your own operations or calculated by using LCA software tools, and leveraging estimated proxies for the respective material or activity. With those options, SAP provides a hybrid approach to support you moving over time from average to actual emission data.
  Note

  For more information, refer to Using the Manage Sustainability Factors Application in the SAP Help portal at :https://help.sap.com/docs/sustainability-footprint-management/application-help-for-corporate-and-products/using-manage-sustainability-factors-application.

After importing the required emission factors, you need to map those to your purchased products, replicating them from your ERP business data. You can configure all your mappings at various levels of granularity, such as suppliers, product groups, and commodity codes.

The mapping template is auto-generated by the system based on your imported ERP master data and pre-filled with the respective information, such as products, commodity codes, and suppliers. With in-app editing, you can edit, add, or remove entries, and you can associate the emission factor for every line item. Through the value app, you can filter and search all your imported emission factor databases for the most appropriate match. Alternatively, you can also maintain the mappings in a CSV file and upload it to the application.

Note

For more information on the mapping, refer to Using the Manage Mappings Application in the SAP Help portal at:https://help.sap.com/docs/sustainability-footprint-management/application-help-for-corporate-and-products/using-manage-mappings-application.

The Manage Purchased Product Footprints app provides an overview of all emission factors maintained and used in the footprint calculation and their validity.

It can import the following tasks:

• Import mapped factors from the mapping table.
• Enter or edit emissions manually and assign a data source.
• Display a list of all purchased products that have no associated footprints.
• Display a list of imported goods receipts that have no footprints associated.