Research of raw material supply base emissions
Tuomela, Toni (2020)
Tuomela, Toni
2020
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020052613726
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020052613726
Tiivistelmä
The case company has joined Science Based Targets, which is a global initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The case company needs to publish its emissions reduction targets during 2020, and this thesis provides input to form realistic targets. Emissions are divided into three scopes: emissions of the company’s own operations, emissions of the purchased energy and the emissions of the supply base. This thesis focused on the Scope 3 emissions.
The case company hypothesizes that by reallocating the raw material purchasing volumes of each item to the supplier with the lowest emissions, the case company’s raw material supply base emissions will become drastically reduced. This was investigated in this thesis by studying the emissions by the raw material suppliers when raw materials are produced for the case company. This investigation entailed a survey sent to all raw material suppliers regarding which sources of energy they use, how much energy they use per product ton and regarding their total carbon footprint per product ton.
An objective of this thesis was to study whether the selected approach is suitable to gather useful information about the raw material supply base emissions, whether this information can be used to create concrete actions towards reducing the emissions and whether realistic emission reduction targets can be created. Most suppliers were not able to answer the question concerning total carbon footprint. Regarding energy usage, the suppliers’ reported figures were not comparable during the study, even though it compared suppliers of the same item. The only aspect that could be further investigated was the energy source mix per item-supplier combination. This means that the chosen research approach was not suitable to study these topics.
This thesis created a purchasing volume weighted average gCO2/kWh index for the whole raw material supplier base, and the same index was calculated for different purchasing volume reallocation scenarios. In the realistic scenario, the achieved emissions reductions were only a couple percentage points, which falls within the study’s margin of error. This means that the hypothesis is not true and that other actions need to be taken to reduce the raw material supply base emissions.
The case company hypothesizes that by reallocating the raw material purchasing volumes of each item to the supplier with the lowest emissions, the case company’s raw material supply base emissions will become drastically reduced. This was investigated in this thesis by studying the emissions by the raw material suppliers when raw materials are produced for the case company. This investigation entailed a survey sent to all raw material suppliers regarding which sources of energy they use, how much energy they use per product ton and regarding their total carbon footprint per product ton.
An objective of this thesis was to study whether the selected approach is suitable to gather useful information about the raw material supply base emissions, whether this information can be used to create concrete actions towards reducing the emissions and whether realistic emission reduction targets can be created. Most suppliers were not able to answer the question concerning total carbon footprint. Regarding energy usage, the suppliers’ reported figures were not comparable during the study, even though it compared suppliers of the same item. The only aspect that could be further investigated was the energy source mix per item-supplier combination. This means that the chosen research approach was not suitable to study these topics.
This thesis created a purchasing volume weighted average gCO2/kWh index for the whole raw material supplier base, and the same index was calculated for different purchasing volume reallocation scenarios. In the realistic scenario, the achieved emissions reductions were only a couple percentage points, which falls within the study’s margin of error. This means that the hypothesis is not true and that other actions need to be taken to reduce the raw material supply base emissions.