The situation is different with the finished products' climate footprint, or more precisely their CO₂ footprint. Few companies today are able to calculate the CO₂ footprint of their production (or CO₂ equivalent; CO₂e); they do not know the CO₂e of the raw materials nor the footprint of their own production apparatus.

Making up the CO₂ footprint is a rather complex calculation, where the various sources of the footprint are divided into 3 scopes:

The complexity of the calculation probably scares quite a few companies from starting a calculation at all, but it is quite certain that within a short time we will be met with demands to do the calculation. On the one hand, there will be demands from the authorities - linked to the new, ambitious CO₂ taxes that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen launched in her 2022 New Year's speech, and on the other hand, more and more business customers will demand that their sub-suppliers can account for their products' CO₂ footprint. As for the latter, our partner is BASF a good example with a very clear policy in this area.

At Tracelink, we are currently working on making it simpler to do the climate calculation. In many cases, we can actually automatically collect figures for the companies' consumption of electricity, water and heat. And in many cases we can also find at least some good estimates for the CO₂e of various raw materials - per kg, litres, metres, cubic metres, etc.

Based on the numbers, it is possible to calculate a footprint. Based on the above section, it is e.g. easy to see that consumption of one kg of aluminum gives approx. twice as large a footprint as a consumption of one kg of steel. In this way, based on a product's BOM and route in production, we can calculate both the product's price and the product's CO₂e. So going forward, the cost price of an item in Tracelink will consist of an amount of DKK X. and a climate footprint of Y CO₂e.

March 2022