September 10, 2008—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are urging companies to broaden their carbon footprint calculations with a new method that estimates the amount of greenhouse gas emissions across all tiers of the entire supply chain for all industries.
Carbon footprints are typically reported in “tiers.” Tier one includes emissions by the company’s own activities. Tier two expands to include emissions from electricity and steam purchased by the company. Tier three includes all other emissions from the company’s entire supply chain of goods and services.
Companies usually opt to report only their tier one or tier two greenhouse gas emissions, but Carnegie Mellon researchers H. Scott Matthews, Chris T. Hendrickson, and Christopher L. Weber say two-thirds of US industries would overlook 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions if they continue to neglect reporting on tier three emissions.
“By far, most companies are pursuing very limited footprints toe prints really instead of comprehensive ones,” said Matthews in a statement.
The average industry has only 14 percent of its total greenhouse gas emissions in tier one and 12 percent in tier two for a total of 26 percent. The researchers urge industry to use comprehensive screening tools, such as the Web site they helped develop, which are able to analyze carbon footprints and other impacts for different economic sectors in the US economy. They argue that failing to do so will lead to poor decision-making when seeking to mitigate their impact.
