Cutting Carbon, Improving Transparency

The drive to provide greater transparency on the carbon footprint of products is gathering pace. What does this mean for the quarrying and aggregates industry and the information it must supply to its customers? Dr Martyn Kenny, director of sustainability at Tarmac, explains

I often get asked if there will come a time when customer procurement decisions are based purely on a product’s carbon footprint rather than its price. Against a challenging economic backdrop, it is difficult to put a precise date on this, but it is clear that the two are becoming ever more closely linked and that the carbon lifecycle of products is already a key influencing factor for many firms.

The legislative landscape is changing with the Government announcing its fourth Carbon Budget in May and the UK becoming the first country to set legally binding carbon-reduction targets beyond 2020. The Government is also currently consulting about bringing in mandatory greenhouse gas reporting for companies. The effect of these tougher targets, the ‘cost’ of carbon, demand for increased supply chain transparency and a pressure to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions will continue to drive the increased focus on carbon.

In the near future companies across all sectors will face additional financial burdens if they do not cut carbon from their business and supply chains. All industries, but especially those that are energy-intensive, will need to contend with the impact of the carbon price floor, and those organizations that have Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) obligations will see their carbon performance published in a league table in October and will be charged £12 per tonne of carbon from April 2011, a price which is likely to rise.

These changes will, ultimately, have a major impact on the bottom line. The upshot is that companies will need to procure lower-carbon products because it will no longer be financially viable to not to do so.

The requirements outlined in many tenders already give an indication of the importance of reducing carbon across the supply chain. Providing carbon footprint information on products is now a prerequisite of many contracts. At Tarmac, we are frequently asked to supply carbon data on our products and services, demonstrate the sustainability of our supply chain and prove that our products are responsibly sourced, as well as provide comprehensive information about our sustainability performance.

While construction tenders vary greatly in the sophistication of their questions regarding carbon measurement, it is clear that cutting carbon is no longer a tick-box exercise. I recently saw one contract tender brief that included fixed penalty costs imposed on the contractor if the carbon footprint of the project did not match the targets within the contractor’s original tender submission. A little harsh? Possibly, but certainly a sign of things to come. It is calling the bluff of companies that, in the past, might have taken a ‘finger in the air’ approach to committing to sustainability and carbon targets, promising something they never had a hope of delivering simply to win a contract.

With these requirements from clients and more robust legislation on the horizon, contractors are demanding more information and greater transparency from their supply chains. One major contractor recently announced that it wanted its supply chain partners to record and provide monthly data on carbon, water, waste and transport patterns. This contractor is forging ahead with this strategy because its own developer client is committed to sustainable construction and wants to benchmark the environmental performance of its supply chain.

I welcome this approach and I am fully behind the drive to make every company more responsible for reducing its environmental impact and measuring carbon comprehensively. However, it is important that the quarrying and aggregates industry, together with contractors and clients, has a clear and common understanding of whole-lifecycle carbon measurement and what is included in a carbon footprint.

When assessing the carbon footprint of a product it is necessary to look at the carbon emissions associated with extracting and transporting all raw materials and fuels to a manufacturing site, processing these materials into construction products, the emissions from transporting them to the construction site and then from their installation on site.

It is also essential to consider the whole-life performance of a product when in use, rather than just its embodied carbon footprint. Embodied carbon is important, but it must be weighed up against the context of the whole-life carbon performance of a product in its final application, such as a building or road. Applying this approach capitalizes upon the significant carbon efficiency benefits that properties such as durability and thermal mass can bring.

The quarrying and aggregates industry already gives customers a level of carbon footprint information for products, but it needs to get to a point where everyone is comparing like-for-like. Simply providing a figure on the carbon generated during manufacture is not enough and undermines any efforts to cut carbon across the entire process. Customers at all stages in the supply chain have a responsibility to ensure that they fully understand the breadth of carbon footprint information they are given. In turn, suppliers must be absolutely honest and transparent in the footprint data they are supplying, to ensure they are comprehensive and encompass all elements of the process.

The challenge for us all is to develop easy-to-use systems that can provide comprehensive carbon footprint data for any product from any location. Customers will need these data to provide their own clients with complete transparency on the carbon lifecycle of specified products.

Providing robust product data is key to securing competitive advantage. Shrewd buyers are sceptical of ‘softer’ initiatives that lack quantifiable evidence and instead want suppliers who can back up their claims with data – they are starting to look for robust achievements supported by independent evidence before they meet at the negotiating table.

Providing meaningful carbon footprint data is no longer just information for annual sustainability reports – it is integral to securing new business. The quarrying and aggregates industry needs to seize this opportunity to provide consistent data that can help to cut emissions, support customers in making informed buying choices and provide greater transparency across the supply chain.