How industries can benefit from the findings

Climate protection aspects are increasingly becoming an integral part of the business decisions of industrial companies and their customers. This part of the project deals with the question of how companies can meet the requirements of a climate-neutral production or supply chain through carbon footprint-based verification concepts for various use cases. The basis for this is comprehensive and periodic CO2 accounting to identify the largest emission sources in the company and to monitor the effectiveness of the measures taken in response.

In addition to the direct emissions (Scope 1) caused by a company in its own operations, it is important to also consider the indirect energy-related emissions (Scope 2, procurement of power / district heating) and the upstream and downstream energy emissions (Scope 3, e.g. preliminary products and services). Scope 3 emissions can usually only be influenced or reduced by the actors in the supply and sales chains. As a result, upstream suppliers are under pressure to support their industrial customers in reducing scope 3 emissions. Against this backdrop, methodologically sound verification of the origin of renewable energy is essential for the credible achievement of climate neutrality.

This part of the project addresses the main consequences of the options outlined above for the design of GOs on carbon accounting according to the most important accounting standards. Various norms and standards for accounting for corporate carbon footprints (CCF) can serve as the basis for credible climate neutrality. However, both these standards and the definition of climate neutrality allow considerable leeway. Therefore, the chosen methods must be documented transparently in order to ensure comparability of accounting and climate neutrality. The project investigates to what extent GOs and other RE verification systems can facilitate such comparability and meet the consumers’ desire for transparency.

Due to the open-ended nature of the sector-specific investigation, the GO4Industry project will analyse but cannot fully work out the respective procedures of CO2 accounting. Instead, it aims to structure the topic as far as possible and to set the agenda for more detailed work.