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Carbon Footprinting in Supply Chains: Measurement, Reporting, and Disclosure

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Sustainable Supply Chains

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Supply Chain Management ((SSSCM,volume 23))

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Abstract

This chapter discusses several important aspects related to supply chain carbon footprinting. It presents the main motivations for carbon footprinting and describes how carbon footprints can be measured. It introduces different carbon accounting methods, ranging from direct measurement-based to extrapolation-based ones. It also provides an example of a supply chain carbon footprinting from the telecommunications industry. In this chapter, we show that defining the right scope is crucial, not only because it has strong implications for the type of measurement methods that can be implemented, but also because indirect scope 3 emissions, can represent a large share of an organization’s carbon emissions. While the lack of reliable and high-quality data can be an obstacle to correctly measure Scope 3 emissions, ignoring them can lead to a serious lack of information required to make appropriate decisions for reducing the supply chain’s carbon emissions. Finally, we discuss other additional challenges related to carbon footprinting and highlight the importance of extending the horizon of sustainable supply chains beyond carbon emissions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    IPCC is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change (http://www.ipcc.ch/).

  2. 2.

    The Kyoto Protocol committed its parties by setting internationally binding carbon emission reduction targets: 5% against 1990 levels during the first commitment period (2008–2012) and at least 18% below 1990 levels during the second commitment period (2013–2020).

  3. 3.

    The CDP is a nonprofit international organization that runs the global disclosure system for businesses, cities, and governments to measure and manage their environmental impacts (https://www.cdp.net/). Adding the cities, states, and regions that also disclosed data to CDP in 2021, the total number of disclosing entities was over 14,000 (CDP 2022).

  4. 4.

    See https://sciencebasedtargets.org/companies-taking-action#table.

  5. 5.

    See https://www.cdp.net/en-US/WhatWeDo/Pages/investors.aspx.

  6. 6.

    Where appropriate, we quote directly from the GHG Protocol throughout this chapter.

  7. 7.

    See https://www.iso.org/standard/71206.html.

  8. 8.

    See https://ghgprotocol.org/blog/glec-framework-universal-method-logistics-emissions-accounting.

  9. 9.

    See https://www.ipe.com/news/issb-to-require-businesses-to-report-scope-3-greenhouse-gas-emissions/10062925.article.

  10. 10.

    See https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221107IPR49611/sustainable-economy-parliament-adopts-new-reporting-rules-for-multinationals.

  11. 11.

    See https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/media/in-bold-new-move-biden-administration-makes-cdps-model-the-law and https://www.allenovery.com/en-gb/global/news-and-insights/publications/us-securities-and-exchange-commission-proposes-extensive-climate-related-disclosure-regime-covering-all-sec-registrants.

  12. 12.

    Bilan Carbone ADEME (French equivalent of the US EPA): https://data.ademe.fr/datasets/base-carbone(r).

  13. 13.

    Note that there exist more detailed methods for calculating the carbon footprint of transportation; please refer to Chap. 5 by Blanco and Sheffi (2024).

  14. 14.

    This section draws on “The GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard” (WRI and WBCSD 2011a), which we cite at various points throughout this section.

  15. 15.

    See https://www.unicef.org/reports/critical-business-actions-achieving-water-secure-world.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems Engineering, École de technologie supérieure & Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT), Montréal (Québec), Canada

    Tasseda Boukherroub

  2. KEDGE Business School, The Centre of Excellence in Supply Chain (CESIT), Talence, France

    Yann Bouchery

  3. Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Tarkan Tan

  4. School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands

    Jan C. Fransoo

  5. UCLA Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Charles J. Corbett

Authors
  1. Tasseda Boukherroub
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  2. Yann Bouchery
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  3. Tarkan Tan
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  4. Jan C. Fransoo
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  5. Charles J. Corbett
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tasseda Boukherroub .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kedge Business School, Talence, France

    Yann Bouchery

  2. Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Charles J. Corbett

  3. School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Jan C. Fransoo

  4. Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Tarkan Tan

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Boukherroub, T., Bouchery, Y., Tan, T., Fransoo, J.C., Corbett, C.J. (2024). Carbon Footprinting in Supply Chains: Measurement, Reporting, and Disclosure. In: Bouchery, Y., Corbett, C.J., Fransoo, J.C., Tan, T. (eds) Sustainable Supply Chains. Springer Series in Supply Chain Management, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45565-0_3

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