Is It Possible to Calculate the Carbon Footprint of a Service?
Alongside products, materials and companies, services also have their own emissions.
We asked LCA expert MSc. Jonas Schreyrer about a frequently asked question.
Question: Is it possible to calculate the carbon footprint of a service?
J. Schreyrer (J.S.): Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) are all about showing the impact that purchasing choices have on the climate. This does not only work for a solid product but also for a service, as these often are the products being sold in business-to-business transactions. To be able to have a service, you usually need some kind of infrastructure (i.e. servers for an IT service), or some kind of action needs to happen (i.e. driving somewhere). All these have related energy costs and therefore some type of emission that impacts the climate.
Q: How do you calculate the PCF of a service?
J.S.: The first step in any PCF is defining the functional unit. In the case of a service, it is the quantified description of the function of one service unit. As an example, this could be a concert, an hour of server usage or an average or specific package delivery. Then you need to look at all the processes and materials that go into the service. Here you already enter the classic PCF calculation, summing up all energy and material inputs to get a final value for your product.
Q: Are there any specific things you need to consider when calculating the PCF of a service?
J.S.: For services, especially in the IT and communication fields, things can quickly become complicated. Therefore, it is important to define the scope and "system boundaries" of your analysis very precisely and where your cut-off will be, meaning which parts will fall outside of your study.
For example, if you were to analyze the service of one text message, that text message will at some point go through a satellite. Does it makes sense to include the production and launch into space of the satellite while calculating the emissions of that text message? Hence, you have to decide where your study ends, as it can become a never-ending calculation.
Another important thing to consider when calculating any carbon footprint is the quality of the data you will use for your calculation. As unfortunately primary CO2 data from partners in your supply chain is still predominantly lacking, you need to rely on accurate secondary CO2 data. This data will complete the gap of missing primary CO2 data with information coming from a variety of sources like published scientific studies, public and official national statistics, company reports etc. However, in order to be able to calculate the most accurate carbon footprint, this data needs to be suffficient, verified and updated.
Q: What are the benefits of calculating the CF of a service (from the perspective of the service provider)?
J.S.: Generally there are two main benefits of carbon footprints for services. The first and main one for the service provider itself is that it serves a transparency purpose. In our team, we like to quote: "You cannot control what you cannot measure" by Peter Drucker. Once you have a detailed analysis of a service's emissions, you have access to a clear picture of that service's emission hotpots and improvement potentials. This benefit is manifold: it enables the provider to tackle the hotspots, to fulfil its emissions reporting duty and improves its trustworthyness in the eyes of investors and clients.
Currently, numerous regulations a being set in place to push national and international decarbonization agendas. The regulations push companies to look at their impact and improve it, and PCFs are an important part of this.
The second benefit of a service's CF is customer information. If you can show, that your service might have less impact on the climate than a generic benchmark and that you are transparent and working on improving your service's footprint, this can considerably improve the brand's image and potentially increase sales.
Q: Any example of a service's carbon footprint?
J.S.: Probably the most known example of a service carbon footprint which many would not think of as such is for a car drive. The carbon footprint of around 140 g CO2e per driven km is technically the carbon footprint of the functional unit of 1 km of travel, which is a service. Another common example that people might have heard of regarding service carbon footprints is the online streaming of videos for a duration of an hour. According to the Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung, it lies at 2-4 g of CO2e per hour for non-mobile internet and up to 90 g for mobile internet.
Another example is a hotel stay: According to calculations by the Verband Deutsches Reisemanagement e.V., a 7 nights stay in a 3-star hotel in Great Britain amounts to a total of 158.34 kg of CO2e emitted (this accounts for the CO2 from the energy consumption, CO2 from water consumption, CO2 from wastewater and CO2 from waste).
Technically one can even think of the commonly known CO2 report of companies, often called Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) in the terms of the CO2 emissions linked to the operation of a business over one year as the "PCF" of a servcice company, as the company could be perceived as the actual "product". It would make sense to view it from the angle of CO2e per job provided, or CO2e per revenue generated etc., but these would be fairly easy recalculation one could do by having the base carbon footprint of the entire operation (so the CCF) and applying it to whichever functional unit is desired.
All in all, calculating the carbon footprint of a service is possible, and necessary for LCA in general. It also is a good way to increase transparency for a still opaque area that is insufficiently covered by the corporate carbon footprint.
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