Why Our World Needs You To Evaluate Your Sustainability Data Quality, Now.
Climate change has caused over two million deaths in 50 years, according to the UN. Another recent peer-reviewed study found that in a scenario where the Earth warms by an average of 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, 83 million excess deaths will occur before the end of the century due to temperature rise.
Unicef claims that the climate crisis is also a child rights crisis: with children experiencing global displacement, toxic air respiration and unprecedented levels of disease attribution.
In order to execute on GHG reduction, and thus save lives, we need to find the insights on how to do so first. This has everything to do with the quality of data that you are starting with and is exactly why major food companies are shifting to HowGood’s research as their organizational source of truth.
At HowGood, I am enveloped in sustainability strategy with the largest food companies in the world. This nexus position gives myself, and our team, a bird’s eye view of the exact business forces that are accelerating and impeding our transition to net zero. There are two major "brakes" that I’m seeing described below, followed by easy "green light" research and technologies available to the industry with HowGood partnership.
Generalized Data Slows Time To Reduction
1. Emission Factor Inaccuracy
Within F&B Scope 3 Purchased Goods and Services inventories, the emission factors (EFs) that teams were using before working with HowGood were not representative of the actual good that they were purchasing. Beyond not even being an appropriate match, the emission factor didn’t reflect growing region or supplier-specific inputs if the supplier had provided them. More on how to scale relevant supplier engagement later.
It’s not that these generalized emission factors are “bad” per se, it’s that they are not accurate. After factoring in the volume of material being sourced, such inaccuracy often has drastic impacts on system-wide accounting and decision making.
These outputs don’t only affect the baseline that investors and other stakeholders are referencing, but they are inherently inhibiting reduction insights from surfacing to business decision makers.
If you’re using one emission factor for all of the “sweetener” related ingredient products that you’re purchasing, that doesn’t give you much insight into how to reduce impact within your sweetener purchasing category or what kind of abatement measures you can take with specific suppliers based on where their growing their origin crops.
2. Supplier Engagement Inefficiencies: Data Collection
We know that the ultimate level of data granularity is leveraging supplier-specific inputs. Prior to working with HowGood, F&B companies were often prompting supplier requests for company-wide sustainability initiatives, Scope 1 & 2 reporting and other high-level supply chain conversations as stand alone means.
This makes it difficult to translate into product-level impact that can be used to account for the specific good that they are purchasing from the supplier.
Unless the supplier is already working with HowGood or another high-quality carbon accounting provider, there's two smaller sub-brakes worth identifying:
a) Suppliers may not have readily-available, verifiable, methodological sound cradle-to-manufacturing gate carbon footprint values that their buyers can use for PCF, S3 and SBTi FLAG reporting.
b) If they do, the EFs used for the agricultural life cycle phase may still be calculated by generalized emission factors or the boundaries necessary for SBTi FLAG are not explicitly broken out.
The GHG Protocol states that data collected from a supplier may be less accurate than high-quality average data for a particular ingredient.
What if my suppliers don’t have their own LCAs or emission factors?
Because of HowGood’s granular approach to research, and thus emission factors, if a supplier is able to update basic assumptions about where the origin crop is being grown, HowGood can then easily update our crop sourcing assumption and overlay our respective research to that.
This means that even if the supplier does not have their own LCA or Product Carbon Footprint, it is still possible to arrive at a more granular and customized emission factor with basic primary supplier-provided inputs.
How do I enable my suppliers to update assumption inputs at scale?
HowGood recently launched SupplierConnect which is a separate interface for suppliers to update such assumptions within seconds. They can update as much or as little as they have available within their own organization, helping you to reap the granularity benefits regardless of where the supplier is in their own sustainability journey.
Industry Note: If you’re starting from a category level, it can be daunting to think about how to reflect supplier-specific EFs into your PG&S inventory. But if you start at the supplier-specific material EF level (using research like HowGood’s) it’s a much easier lift to update with supplier-level inputs.
What if the supplier has their own product-level LCA or Emission Factor?
HowGood’s technology also invites the supplier to submit their pre-calculated and researched product level LCAs and EFs via the SupplierConnect interface, if it’s available.
If pre-calculated, the supplier must also provide substantiation documentation that will then move through HowGood’s QA/QC process to be accepted for use.
HowGood has reviewed and researched tens of thousands of LCAs over the years. Our expertise puts us in a unique position to determine a “high quality” LCA from a “poor quality” LCA. Evaluation criteria for acceptance (even if it’s coming from a supplier) include data quality used for the agricultural assumption life cycle stage, boundary separation alignment, temporal relevance, sound methodology and more.
Granular Emission Factors Will Light Your Rocket Ship to Reduction
By leveraging higher quality emission factors (starting with higher quality matches and updating with supplier inputs) for your carbon accounting and reduction strategy, you can:
HowGood’s new Professional Services arm is conducting emission factor comparative analyses to formally assess the quality of the emission factors that you are using. Book time with Christina Lampert to receive your analysis and streamline your path to reduction today.
This is a great piece Christina Lampert and continues to highlight the importance of accurate data in decision making.