CO₂e Quantification
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that humanity faces. We can only tackle it by working together. Bühler’s Environmental Quantification Service is designed to support customers with this task. By mapping and measuring key sustainability metrics such as CO₂e emissions for customer sites and products, Bühler provides both the insights and the means to drive significant environmental improvements.
Janet Anderson, November 2022
How can we sustainably meet the needs of the world’s growing population by 2050? This question is no longer asked only by climate scientists and environmental organizations – it is now a mainstream concern. Consumers and businesses around the world acknowledge that we must adapt our behavior to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
As a technology company at the heart of global value chains that feed 2 billion people and move 1 billion people every day, Bühler has the potential to play a significant role in tackling this challenge. “Apart from reducing the company’s own emissions, the biggest lever we as Bühler have is the use of our technology and our processing expertise to support our customers on their sustainability journey,” explains Ian Roberts, Bühler’s Chief Technology Officer.
At the Networking Days 2019, Bühler CEO Stefan Scheiber reinforced the company’s commitment to having solutions ready to multiply by 2025 at the latest that will reduce energy, waste, and water by 50 percent in its customers’ value chains. Bühler’s Environmental Quantification Service is an important step toward achieving these goals. Many businesses today have made sustainability commitments, such as achieving Net Zero or CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) neutrality. With the help of Bühler’s Environmental Quantification Service, customers can measure their environmental footprint, understand where the emission hot spots are, and take steps to reduce them. “Our aim is not just to provide validated environmental assessment or carbon calculations, but also to help our customers reduce environmental impact. We are in a unique position because through our expertise we can help increase the efficiency with which raw materials are transformed into products across multiple production lines, in multiple industries, and thereby contribute significantly to reducing the carbon emissions that cause climate change,” says Jay O’Nien, Head of the Environmental Quantification Service.
The biggest lever we as Bühler have is the use of our technology and our processing expertise to support our customers on their sustainability journey.
Ian Roberts, Chief Technology Officer at Bühler
In order to reduce environmental impact or CO2e emissions, the first step is to measure. Bühler has measured the CO2e footprint of all the products processed through its technology and also quantified other key environmental impacts such as land use and water consumption. The team is now also supporting customers with such quantifications. The methodology behind the CO2e assessments is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG), the most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standard worldwide. It provides customers with a calculation of CO2e – the amount of all greenhouse gases together, expressed in a single figure – relative to any specific manufacturing activity.
The Environmental Quantification team are also able to quantify the impact of Bühler technology to determine the environmental benefit it can bring when it is installed in customer plants and in the entire value chain. “For many of our customers, the majority of their site emissions are comprised of the energy required to run our technology. We therefore set out to understand the emissions caused by each of our core technologies and their impact at our customers’ sites,” explains Giulia Manzolini, Project Manager Environmental Quantification.
The team has already carried out 35 CO2e quantifications, three of which have been certified according to ISO standard 14067, which sets out the international requirements and guidelines for quantification and reporting of the carbon footprint of a product. Furthermore, the methodology has been used externally with customers for seven products and solutions. The Environmental Quantification Service is now available for every market and every customer. “We can certify the customer’s site and products with the confidence that the results meet international standards,” explains Manzolini. “The program is available for every market and every customer to understand their impact. In the case of B2C customers, since the service is fully validated, it provides them with information they can use to label their final products.”
Our team can certify the customer’s site and products with the confidence that the results meet international standards.
Giulia Manzolini , Project Manager Environmental Quantification at Bühler
The Bühler team provided us with extensive insight into the details and particulars of the calculation, so that the subsequent evaluations were always comprehensible and transparent for us as non-experts in this field. This enables us even today to answer our customers’ questions about our results with ease.
Jan Cordesmeyer, CEO of Hemelter Mühle
Hemelter Mühle has been a family-run milling company for over 128 years. It is managed by Jan Cordesmeyer in the fourth generation. Approximately 360,000 metric tons of wheat, rye, and spelt are milled across two sites in Rheine and Spelle, Germany.
In order to take action, it is necessary to understand the source of emissions. The GHG protocol broadly divides emissions into three categories. Scope 1 includes direct emissions from a company’s facilities and vehicles, Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased electricity. These are the emissions over which the producer has most control and therefore where companies focus most efforts at reduction. Scope 3 is more challenging because it covers emissions over which a business has less control – those from its upstream and downstream activities.
What is the CO2e footprint of 1 ton of flour, for example? If we start with a typical flour mill, by far the biggest source of emissions is the milling itself. But other processes also contribute, such as blending, cleaning, bagging, loading, screening, and pelletizing. That covers Scopes 1 and 2. But the full answer depends on many other factors, including the amount of fertilizer, pesticides, and fuels used on the farm, the energy used for storage, transport, and manufacturing, the materials used for packaging, and so on. To get a complete and accurate picture, data is required from across the entire value chain.
At DGS we are happy to have such great support on CO₂e quantification for the whole die-casting process from our main die-casting cell supplier Bühler. The Bühler team’s profound understanding of the whole process helped deliver an efficient and successful project.
ANDREAS MÜLLER , CEO of DGS
DGS is an innovative developer and international manufacturer of complex, highquality die-cast components. DGS has four production locations, in Switzerland, Czech Republic, and two in China.
It’s not an easy task, but it’s an important one, because otherwise companies cannot properly start to reduce their environmental impact. The Environmental Quantification Service can quantify emissions even where Bühler technology is not used by applying standard emission factors. This enables the team to scale up the emission metrics throughout the whole value chain to give a sector or industry calculation. “You want to know what the CO2e footprint of your 1 ton of flour is as closely as possible by looking at each value chain step – not just the total average,” says Manzolini. “It is this level of detail that drives fact-based decision-making and will help you determine the optimal actions to take to reduce your specific CO2e footprint.”
This is why communication, transparency, and collaboration with suppliers and other stakeholders is vital. “Beyond calculating your own CO2e footprint, businesses need to communicate with other stakeholders,” says Béatrice Conde, Food Science Officer at Bühler. “The more information and transparency there is in the supply chain, the better companies can work together up and down their value chains to reduce their overall impact.”
Once a clear picture has been reached, Bühler can help customers reduce their environmental impact by increasing the efficiency of key processing steps and by helping to reduce waste, water, and energy in their value chains. With the Environmental Quantification Service, customers can compare how a new technology will improve emissions relative to an older technology. The quantity of emissions avoided through the use of Bühler technologies and services is calculated, but so too are the savings in other terms. “Our goal is to embed sustainability into everyday business,” says O’Nien. “We are looking at how we can use sustainability to generate value for our customers.”
Our goal is to embed sustainability into everyday business. We are looking at how we can use sustainability to generate value for our customers.
Jay O’nien, Head of the Environmental Quantification Service at Bühler
This is especially effective when Bühler technologies are combined with services, including digital platforms, that enable customers to optimize their processes and assets. “Through myBühler and Bühler Insights, and the applications running on them, customers can calculate and report on impact along complete value chains, while the monitoring services ensure the optimal operation of process technologies to save energy, water, and reduce waste at any point in time. Retrofitting services to renovate the installed base have proven to be one of the fastest ways to cut emissions.
“This is our unique selling point. We not only offer knowledge about sustainability, but also access to process expertise,” explains O’Nien. “And we are continuously improving our calculations and validating them with primary site data.”
The goal is to support customers throughout their sustainability journey. The team puts together an integrated report, including information about emission levels, as well as an overview of actions and measures and best practices. With this the customer can create a longer-term strategy. The team can show a customer how their carbon impact can be reduced by focusing on raw materials, comparing the footprints of different production methods and alternative raw materials.
“We might explore with our customers the possibilities of using different recipes and sources of raw materials, or reducing the consumption of gas, as well as how to valorize waste side streams. For example, we analyzed the potential impact of switching to electric ovens in combination with purchasing or producing electricity from renewable energy sources,” says Manzolini. “We want to create awareness for our customers about their value chain, so that they know who to engage with, from farmers to distributors and so on. This takes the whole process a step beyond our impact.”
The potential emissions savings from combining the TURBU E electric oven and switching to renewable energy in our biscuits value chain.
These changes result in a reduction of 6 percent in plant energy consumption and up to a reduction of 93 percent in direct emissions from the customer’s manufacturing processes.
It’s all about leveraging digitalization to connect the different dots of the value chain. The team has already made a great deal of progress in starting to link the customer’s data with the farmer’s data and with Bühler’s manufacturing data, and putting it all in one assessment.
“We’re not finished yet – this is just a first step – but we’ve made good progress,” says O’Nien. “And by connecting all the data across the whole value chain right up to the final consumer, we can see the long-term impact this service can have.”
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