Carbon Trust Wales is urging businesses in Wales to consider the financial and environmental savings that come from having a more energy efficient supply chain, on the launch of its Value Chain Manager tool.
Value Chain Manager uniquely brings together the combination of leading Cloud-based sustainability software with unrivalled expertise and carbon reduction data, based on a decade of Carbon Trust experience. It will help large organisations measure, manage, and reduce indirect emissions and ultimately capture the associated cost and reputational benefits of doing so. Value Chain Manager was developed in collaboration with sustainability software developer CRedit 360.
According to Carbon Trust research as much as 80% of a company’s total carbon impact lies outside their direct operational control (i.e. their Scope 3 emissions). Every tonne of carbon emitted needlessly represents a cost of between £200 and £400 per tonne to a business, based on today’s energy prices.
The business case for reducing direct (Scope 1 and 2) carbon emissions is well established, with reductions of between 20-50% being achievable through proven, cost effective measures such as energy efficiency. Many companies have utilised software to help measure and report these reductions, and with a decade of experience, credit360 has led the market in providing such sustainability and carbon reporting solutions. To fully understand the total carbon impact of a company’s operations, measurement needs to go beyond company-owned operating boundaries and reach into the broader supply and distribution chains, or Value Chain, to cover Scope 3 emissions.
In accordance with Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, Scope 3 covers reporting categories beyond the direct Scope 1 and 2 emissions of an organisation to include purchased goods and services, business travel and employee commuting.
With challenges around data gathering and supplier engagement, Value Chain Manager helps a business to identify emission hotspots and cost reduction opportunities; categorise suppliers by carbon performance and spend; automatically process procurement or travel data from existing systems; distribute employee and supplier surveys to gather data directly from first-hand experience (primary data); identify opportunities to reduce emissions, waste and cost; and communicate performance and business improvement opportunities with interactive reporting tools
John Whybrow, General Manager, Software, the Carbon Trust commented, “The Value Chain Manager will totally revolutionise carbon reduction in the value chain. Companies are increasingly seeking benefits from managing their total carbon impact, from everything they buy and sell to how their employees get to work. Value Chain Manager will help organisations unlock bottom-line and reputational benefits from addressing their broader supply chain emissions.”
Mark Shields, Managing Director, CRedit360, commented, “This collaboration between CRedit360 and the Carbon Trust underlines our commitment to helping organisations manage the complexity of Scope 3 reporting alongside a broad range of Environmental Health and Safety, compliance and CSR information. Specialism, innovation and usability are core to the CRedit360 approach, which is why we’re particularly proud of this latest initiative.”
Value Chain Manager is a unique online system that leverages in-built data and models to make informed estimates, supplemented with tools to help a company gather and process primary data unique to its business. Value Chain Manager has been developed from the ground up by Carbon Trust experts and CRedit360’s in-house technical team, to integrate an extensive library of data that enables emission factors to be auto-matched to input data, whilst also reporting back levels of data quality. This enables users to make informed business decisions and decide where more input is required to improve data quality.
For more information on Value Chain Manager visit:
www.carbontrust.com/valuechainsoftware
Businesses interested in taking a closer look at the new Value Chain Manager solution can register online for the upcoming webinar on January 16, 2013 at 4pm.