During a product life cycle, energy is required to extract, transport and refine the raw materials, for manufacturing and to distribute the final product and treat the waste at the end of a its useful life.

As fossil energy carriers play the major role for energy supply, any of the above steps is associated with the generation and emission of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc., contributing in turn to the global warming effect, which is measured as the product’s carbon footprint.

Life Cycle Assessment according to ISO 14044 (also covered in the BSI PAS2050) is the state-of-the art methodology to determine your product carbon footprint. Facilitating such a “cradle-to-grave” carbon footprint analysis of your product will disclose your real carbon footprint, reveal reduction potentials and discover negative trade-offs, i.e. the shifting of environmental burdens from one stage of the life cycle to another. 

It is impossible to rely on company-specific data only to conduct an LCA and comply with the high requirements of the international standards. Thus, high-quality databases are essential to quantify the carbon footprint.

GaBi software allows all the GHG emissions of your product to be captured in a systematic and transparent way. Primary data specific to your product can then be incorporated into your analyses and combined with secondary data on GHG emissions available from the GaBi databases.

How can PE help you make your products carbon neutral?

Once we have helped you determine and analyse your carbon footprint, the next step is to reduce it. Reduction methodologies may include energy efficiency, material substitution, fuel switching, eco-design etc.
In order to achieve carbon neutrality, unavoidable carbon emissions can be offset by investing in emission reduction projects.

PE INTERNATIONAL has been the global leader in the field of Carbon Footprint Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment for 18-years; our clients benefit from this experience and can count on having the most consistent and transparent data and emission factors available. PE’s services are performed in line with existing and forthcoming protocols such as the GHG protocol, the ISO 14000 series and the PAS 2050. Emission factors for indirect operations are sourced from, e.g., the EU Life Cycle Database and our own databases, which are fully consistent with one another. PE experts are administering product carbon footprint analyses all around the globe for large, branch leaders in the logistics, IT, retail, metals, chemical industry, many of them listed in the DowJones Sustainability Index.