The Challenge
When we think of an organization’s carbon footprint, we often picture its offices, factories, or business travel. Yet in most sectors, the bulk of emissions comes from elsewhere: the purchased goods, services, and capital equipment.
In aerospace, where the supply chain is global and particularly complex, this challenge is especially significant.
It is in this context that the International Aerospace Environmental Group (IAEG) selected CCG and its partner Carbone 4. Their mandate, assigned in 2020: to develop a methodology, guide, and tool to help members quantify the emissions linked to their purchases and capital assets, while accounting for their very diverse levels of maturity.
The Approach
This project illustrates how a sectoral organization can pool its resources to standardize methodologies and make supply chain emission accounting easier.
Concretely, the first step was to analyze the needs expressed by IAEG members, while taking into account the wide variety of products manufactured in the aerospace industry: from structural parts to electronic components to embedded systems.
We then conducted a review of existing tools, in order to identify the most relevant approaches and build on existing work.
From there, we designed a multi-level methodology that allows each company to progress at its own pace. A calculation tool was developed and tested with a pilot group to validate its robustness and ease of use. Finally, supporting guides were written to facilitate adoption and ensure updates over time.
Deliverables
- A structured methodology, tailored to the realities of IAEG members.
- A calculation tool, tested and validated by users.
- Practical guides for use and regular updates.
The Results
The tool and guides developed in 2020 are now available to all IAEG members. They provide a common, pragmatic framework to integrate supply chain emissions into the aerospace sector’s carbon footprints.
One improvement remains: the integration of supplier-specific emission factors. For confidentiality reasons, these data have not yet been made available. This is a key area of work for future versions of the tool, which would significantly improve the accuracy of the analyses.
In 2022, CCG also had the opportunity to update the emission factor database, helping ensure that the tool remains relevant and usable over time.
Learn More
The results of this project — methodology, guide, and tool — are available on the IAEG website :