Australia – Major Life Cycle Assessment study helps dairy farmers aim for GHG emissions reduction

Dairy Australia worked closely with the Australian dairy industry to measure the carbon footprint of producing a number of dairy foods. This initiative was one of the first carbon footprinting projects to report the emissions of dairy farming on a country level and following the International Dairy Federation sector specific guidelines “A common carbon footprint approach for dairy” (IDF, 2010).

This major Life Cycle Assessment study, carried out by PE INTERNATIONAL, measured the GHG emissions emitted from the production of a number of dairy products to identify the industry’s overall carbon footprint.  An industry cross section of primary data has been analysed from 140 farms across Australia, the life cycle inventory data collection for this project was extensive. A key project objective was to develop a customised software platform which ensures transparency and high data quality during data collection and modelling, which is auditable and can be used by the industry and expanded in future.

This was achieved by developing a linked software platform, combining the benefits of PE’s  SoFi software system including web-based data collection functionality, and the GaBi Life Cycle Assessment software and database package.


Dairy farmers and processors in Australia have a strong track record of working to improve financial, environmental and social outcomes. They understand that sustainability and industry profitability are interdependent. The large number of sustainability initiatives the industry currently undertakes demonstrates this. Dairy Australia invests in a number of key programs and initiatives aimed at helping farmers and processors with GHG emission reduction strategies. One of these initiatives is the Life Cycle Assessment study.

A summary of the final project report is available for download here

Draft version of the EU environmental footprinting methodology released

The European Commission has released a draft version of the EU environmental footprinting methodology currently under development.

DG ENV is now working together with the Commission’s JRC IES and other European Commission services towards the development of a harmonised methodology for the calculation of the environmental footprint of products (including carbon footprint).

This methodology will be developed building on the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook as well as other existing methodological standards and guidance documents (ISO 14040-44, PAS 2050, BP X30, WRI/WBCSD GHG protocol, Sustainability Consortium, ISO 14025, Ecological Footprint, etc).


You can find more information and the draft methodology here

GHG Protocol Standards for Product and Value Chain GHG assessments

The long awaited two new GHG Protocol Standards for Product and Value Chain GHG assessments were officially released. Visit www.ghgprotocol.org for more information. Here you can also download the new standards for free, as well as a range of accompanying tools and guidance documents.

Our GaBi software assess the Carbon Footprint of your products according to international standards such as ISO 14000 series, PAS 2050 or GHG Protocol.

Outcomes of the GHG Protocol workshops

WRI hosted a workshop for companies’ road testing the drafts of the product and scope 3 standards for GHG accounting and reporting. These standards will be finalized by the end of 2010 and publicly available by the beginning of 2011. Read the summary of the workshops here.

Summary of the workshop on the Scope 3 standard

The scope 3 standard will be an extension to the current GHG Protocol – Corporate Standard (revised edition 2004) and will cover all indirect emissions from a company including their supply chains and downstream emissions. About 60 companies representing a diverse range of industries have volunteered to ‘road test’ the draft. As expected there were a variety of preferences and individual agendas howeverconsensus was able to be achieved on many issues:

The most divergent views surfaced on questions about the essential strategy behind the standard, i.e. whether it should be a standard that is primarily about good and complete emissions accounting practice along a corporation’s value chain, or a standard focused on supplier engagement and driving change through this. It was suggested that the standard may be both, and that companies should declare which strategy they are pursuing for carbon accounting and reporting.

Another interesting topic was the setting of boundaries i.e., how much of the scope 3 emissions should the standard require to be reported. The current draft suggests an 80% threshold. Many companies said that in order to do this they will have to determine how much 100% is anyway, and that in this case they may as well report 100% provided it is acceptable to have a higher variance/uncertainty attached to the remaining 20%. 

One positive development was in relation to data types and quality: The current draft requires separate reporting of emissions from primary and secondary data where primary data includes supplier supplied data and secondary data includes sources such as literature, LCA data bases and I/O data bases.  The next version of the standard however, may not require separate reporting of primary and secondary data. Instead, it may just require “reporting the emission totals for each category (16), together with an indication as to what percentage of emissions is based on ‘physical relationships”. This – in our view - increases the accuracy of reporting plus it increases the likelihood of scope 3 reporters using LCA data for their emissions calculations.

Summary of the workshop on the product standard

In contrast to the companies involved in the Scope 3 workshop, there was a broad consensus among road testers on the application, interpretation and optimizations required in the current draft of the product standard:

All road testers confirmed that attributional Life Cycle Assessment was the adequate approach for the accounting of product GHG emissions. It was therefore recommended the section on consequentional LCA be erased in the current draft of the standard.

All road testers confirmed that capital goods were insignificant within the life cycle of the products under investigation. As a result of this, deletion of capital goods from the analysis is being considered. Alternatively, the investigation of capital goods may be limited to facilities owned or controlled by the company performing the carbon footprint analysis. In summary, it was concluded that there is no absolute need for inclusion of capital goods in all upstream and downstream processes.

Most road testing companies did not agree that primary data should have priority, as outlined in the current draft of the standard.. The quality of the Data is the key to identifying preferred data sources. In the current draft of the standard, data quality is only referred to in the reporting phase. It was recommended to change this to using data quality as a criterion to identify the most representative/appropriate data to be used in the analysis.

As many road testers had already undertaken numerous, recent LCA studies, it was concluded that a specific chapter on how to convert an ISO 14044 LCA into the GHG Protocol Product standard, should be included in the standard.

It was emphasized that the standard will provide the building blocks for standardization. However some areas may be not finally standardized, e.g. allocation. Fine tuning of the specifications and choices could occur within the framework of a program or industry specific standards based on the GHG Protocol Initiative. It is likely that the standard will contain a section on how to set up/ write PCRs based on the GHG Protocol standard.

Many road testers expressed their desire for more guidance for tracking biogenic carbon storage (the need for a case study was mentioned). There was disagreement on the PAS 2050 approach to carbon storage credits, however no alternative was available at present.

If you are interested in the ongoing developments of the GHG Protocol initiatives and/or other ongoing standardization such as ISO 14067, PAS 2050, French Grenelle, etc. PE INTERNATIONAL can provide customized workshops and seminars.

Scope 3 GHG Emissions - Emissions beyond the own fence

Since January 2010, 70 corporations have been road-testing two new global standards by measuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their products and supply chains. These standards are part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, which provides standards and guidance for companies and other organizations preparing a GHG emissions inventory. These new standards are focusing on the “indirect” emissions which occur beyond one’s own company or organisational boundaries, the so called Scope 3 emissions.

PE INTERNATIONAL is heavily involved in this process and is participating in the technical working groups preparing the standards. PEI also supports the GHG Protocol Initiative on special issues such as land use change and is now an official software provider for the road testing stage. A third of the testing companies are using PE INTERNATIONAL’s GaBi and SoFi software to record and assess their GHG emissions.


The GHG inventory of a company can be divided into three boundary categories –Scope 1, 2 and 3. Scope 1 includes all direct emissions of corporations, for instance the energy production on site or the use of the Company car fleet. Scope 2 encompasses the emissions of purchased energy, which don’t occur on the company site, such as electricity or district heat. The GHG emissions of activities which are beyond company boundaries but related to company operations are described as Scope 3. These include, for example, employee commuting or business travel, emissions by suppliers or from the use of a product.


The new GHG Protocol Standards will provide a standardized method to inventory emissions associated with individual products across their full life cycle and corporate value chains, taking into account impacts both upstream and downstream of a company’s operations.


The entire life cycle needs to be considered to avoid ‘environmental problem shifting’. Companies, who involve the supply chain as well as the use and end-of-life phases, stand to gain more credibility for their environmental activities and will have a strategic competitive advantage in the long term.

Moreover, measuring these indirect emissions provides companies with a comprehensive base of information. Companies acquire knowledge about the entire impact of their activities and products and can make sounder decisions.

For information regarding WRI road-testing or the new standards, please contact Michael Spielmann.