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Hybrid Carbon Footprint

Hybrid Carbon Footprints

What is a hybrid carbon footprint?

There are two established methods for calculating carbon footprints.

• Input-Output models and
• Process based models

The hybrid model uses the best of both, and a bit like a hybrid car has a much better performance.

Please see the hybrid carbon footprint site for full details of hybrid carbon footprints and level 0,1,2 and 3 Carbon footprints.

Input-Output modelling

This required a massive upfront investment in understanding the inputs and outputs for the entire economy.  However having carried out this initial work then the carbon footprint for any process can be quickly established as soon at the items involved have been classified.

Input-Output summary

• Large upfront investment (has now been carried out for studies such as the NHS carbon footprint)
• Need to accurately identify what is being studied (@UK PLC have artificial intelligence breakthrough to automate)
• Very easy to calculate with the first two pieces of information

Process based models

There is usually a boundary problem of trying to work out what is in the carbon footprint and what is not.  Unfortunately this ability to define the boundary makes process based carbon footprints difficult to compare, and two identical products will have different carbon footprints depending on how the boundary is defined.

Having determined the boundary then the next challenge is finding all the inputs and outputs for the product.  This is done on a one off basis for each product, and the effort can be surprisingly large.

The next stage is to find out the impact of all the inputs and outputs in the process.  This means going downstream and repeating the process for each of the inputs untill all the significant inputs have been measured.

Progress to date

PAS 2050 is a process based model of carbon footprinting and the draft for a new ISO standard.  The carbon trust and leading retailers such as Tesco have been trying to get their suppliers to calculate carbon footprints using PAS 2050, because of the lack of downstream footprint data carbon footprints calculated in this manner have normally cost 100's of thousands of pounds and this has brought the initiative to a standstill.

In the meantime the NHS has calculated its entire carbon footprint using input output models.  The 2004 results were published in 2008 to give an idea of the scale of the task.  This work has been combined with @UK PLC work on using artificial intelligence to understand raw product data.  @UK PLC have now analysed over £ 100 billion of spend, and 3.6 million commonly purchased products.

Putting the two parts together means that @UK PLC now have the carbon footprints to over 3.6 million products.

This now makes carbon foot printing more accurate and affordable, and @UK PLC now have over 3.6 million level 0 carbon footprints.

Carbon footprint levels

• Level 0 Carbon Footprints are used to work out an organisations overall carbon footprint
• Level 1 Carbon Footprints are the entry level for certified carbon footprints and are sufficiently accurate for carbon offsetting
• Level 2 Carbon Footprints help identify the key components that make up your product carbon footprint and help drive the reduction in your carbon footprints
• Level 3 Carbon Footprints provide a fully detailed picture of the carbon footprint for your products supply chain.

Costs

Organisation analysis

Level 0 footprints are used for large scale analysis e.g. Working out the carbon footprint of an NHS Trust.  The cost of working out the overall footprint of an organisation is £ 12,000 (It is £ 6,000 for a run of SpendInsight, which is guaranteed to produce savings, if it does not produce savings then SpendInsight is free, plus £ 6,000 for the run of GreenInsight to build up a complete picture of your organisations impact built up from the individual items that you purchase).

Product analysis

Level 1 Carbon Footprints cost £ 4. The initial assessment cost is broken down into £ 3 for the professional classification of your product and £ 1 per annum for the input-output data. The ongoing cost is £ 1 per annum for the input-output data.

Included in the cost of a level 1 or above carbon footprint is a certified offsetting program provided by @UK PLC for products that are sold via the @UK PLC marketplace or and @UK PLC SiteGenerator ecommerce site.  @UK PLC are happy to carry out a certification program for all of an organisations sales, but there will be an additional charge for the annual audit.

Level 2 Carbon Footprints cost approximately £ 70 if you have 5 sub products. The initial assessment cost is broken down into £ 50 bill of materials and apportionment of overheads plus £ 4 per sub products up to 95% of the sub products carbon footprint, so for 5 sub products it is 5 x £ 4 = £ 20 to get the level 1 Carbon Footprints for the sub products. The ongoing cost is £ 55 per year for the above example with 5 sub products.

Level 3 Carbon Footprints cost approximately £ 450 if you have 5 sub products. The initial assessment cost is broken down into £ 100 bill of materials and apportionment plus approximately £ 70 per sub products up to 98% of the sub products carbon footprint, so for 5 sub products it is 5 x £ 70 = £ 350 to get the level 2 Carbon Footprints for the sub products. The ongoing cost is £ 375 per year for the above example with 5 sub products.


For Level 2 and Level 3 Carbon Footprints an estimate of the organisations overheads is required.  For the apportionment of overheads, the information needs to be provided in the @UK PLC format, should @UK PLC have to determine the overheads it may be significantly more up to the cost of carrying out a run of GreenInsight

Carbon Offsetting programs

@UK PLC manage a certified offsetting program for all carbon footprint customers.  There is no charge for this for items that are sold via the @UK PLC marketplace.  Customers that wish to have certified offsetting for any sales outside the @UK PLC marketplace, will need to have their sales audited.  This can be via a quarterly datafile to be provided at the same time as the organisations VAT report, and along with the VAT report, so that the two files can be reconciled electronically.  The charge for auditing against the vat report is £ 50 per quarter.