Guest article

Emission
Reporting with EDI

How do I transfer my company’s Scope 3 emissions?

Author: Sebastian Portera, CEO initics GmbH, in cooperation with Mr. Torsten Hohe

initics GmbH can support you in exchanging your CO₂ values with your business partners. The following article describes how and why emission reporting is necessary.

Sustainability - more than just a trend

Climate change, CO₂ neutrality, wind power – one reads about sustainability issues everywhere these days, and for good reason. Climate change has been classified as the greatest threat to humanity this century. Accordingly, more and more companies are taking up the issue. The new German government has also set the course for a more sustainable approach to our planet with its Climate Protection Plan 2050. In the future, we will be faced with a number of changes that are intended to counteract climate change. Many of these changes affect all or, in some cases, individual business sectors directly or indirectly. The following article explains which advantages can result for your company through environmentally friendly action and which changes will specifically affect companies.

What are the changes for companies in the future?

Companies that are committed to sustainability in the future will benefit from the upcoming climate protection regulations. While few companies still disclose information voluntarily, non-financial reporting is already mandatory for many large companies. For example, an EU law requires large companies with more than 500 employees to disclose information on the social and environmental impacts of their activity.

It is to be expected that in the future there will be even more climate protection regulations and climate protection laws, which should increase the pressure and oblige even more companies to implement sustainable practices and additionally account for them.

Companies should therefore prepare for environmental reporting regulations – especially listed companies, as they will be among the first to be affected by mandatory disclosure. Those who act with foresight here not only secure a competitive advantage, but in extreme cases also avoid potential legal problems and penalties.

“Initics is our expert in EDI topics, because technology alone does not create benefits. In the future, we will support our customers with Initics in determining & reporting their emissions across the entire supply chain and production.”

Stefan Ehrlich, Executive board, SQL Projekt AG

How to measure sustainability?

There are different approaches to measuring sustainability. One way to measure how polluting a company is is to measure the resulting environmental damage in terms of greenhouse gases emitted. These emission values are added up and indicate what compensation payments or offsetting activities the companies owe the environment.

The scopes for measuring emissions:

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol divides emissions into three ‘scopes’. The association works with governments, industries, NGOs, companies and other organisations to provide standards, guidelines, tools and training for companies and governments. More information on the GHG can be found here.

Scope 1

…includes all direct emissions resulting from the activities of an organisation or its subsidiary. Emission sources include, for example, heat, cooling and steam generation and company-owned vehicles.

Scope 2

… includes the indirect emissions from electricity, heat and steam that the company purchases from utilities.

Scope 3

…includes the other indirect emissions in the supply chain: i.e. all those that are a consequence of the company’s activities but originate from independent sources. These arise along the value chain – both upstream at suppliers and downstream at customers. They arise outside the organisation, e.g. in the supply chains as well as in transport and distribution, business travel, employee commuting and waste.

The extent of scope 3 emissions:

The GHG Protocol lists 15 different categories that are included in Scope 3 emissions. The categories are as follows:

Purchased goods and services
Capital goods
Fuel and energy-related activities not included in Scope 1 and 2.
Transport and delivery (upstream and downstream)
Waste generated in operations
Business travel
Employee commuting
Leased equipment upstream and downstream
Use of products sold
End-of-life treatment of sold products
Investments
Franchises

Solution: Determine emissions via deliveries

With the help of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), it is possible to determine all information about the product from the delivery. Whether in EDIFACT, X12, IDoc or similar EDI formats: In most formats, it is possible to include this information.

In the following illustration, the information – when ordering a binder of 2500 kg – is transferred via the emission factor, for example (see dashboard on the right).

Evaluate emission

Through incoming messages from business partners, evaluations can be made to determine the CO₂-E values of different deliveries. It is possible to calculate the values down to the individual months in order to transfer them automatically to the responsible offices.

In general, all emission values generated directly or indirectly in the company can be evaluated and displayed graphically. This is an ideal way to determine forecasts for upcoming balancing figures or similar.

initics GmbH is a Munich-based company that specialises in data transmission and data integration with business software. The services offered range from classic data transmission via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to data extraction via optical text recognition (OCR).
For these and many other applications, initics GmbH has developed a software solution for data integration called “init data”. Customers benefit from the reliable and professional service of initics GmbH, which is rounded off by the sound technical and professional knowledge of ERP systems as well as business processes.

Website: initics | EDI & Business Integration (German only)

Ihr Ansprechpartner

“Do you have any questions? We will be happy to help you with the introduction and automation of the determination of emission values in your company.”

Sebastian Portera, Managing Director initics GmbH

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