Dynamics of carbon footprints at the manufacturing stage

Abstract

Because of the public awareness of climate change in recent decades, carbon footprint (CF) has become a crucial concern. Many companies have introduced CF estimation for their operational activities. The long-run CF averaging method is common and widely used for CF estimation. This method generates only static CF information; however, it does not detect the dynamics of CFs. In this paper, two case studies, a power plant and a photovoltaic module plant, were conducted to show the dynamic changes in CFs, and the CF difference over various time spans was compared to investigate the influence of CF averaging over different time spans on CF estimation. The results showed that the fluctuation of the CF over time was significant, and the short time spans for the calculation of CF averaging might have positive influences in CF estimation. However, more evidences from industries are required to verify the universality of the results.

Keywords:

• carbon footprint
• dynamics
• carbon labeling

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, ROC and the International Transport and Logistics Research Center at National Taiwan Ocean University. Besides, we thank Mr. Wen-Pin Chung, an experienced LCA practitioner, for his valuable advices on CF assessment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, ROC [grant MOST 103-2221-E-019-050].