DGO-BG Saxony
Marion Regal, head of the Saxony district group, welcomed Dr. Theresa Knobloch to Chemnitz on 27.6.2024 to speak on the topic of "Carbon Footprint". Knobloch is a chemist and has been working in the research and development laboratory with a focus on organic compounds at Dr. Max Schlötter GmbH & Co KG for 5 years. She has been increasingly responsible for sustainability and climate protection within the company for the past three years. A task that is necessary for many reasons, as evidenced by increasing customer inquiries and, not least, EU directives such as the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive). Broadly speaking, the CSRD reporting obligation applies to large companies, capital market-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises and companies with high turnover (> EUR 40 million). These are criteria that apply to Dr.-Ing. Max Schlötter GmbH & Co. Accordingly, the company has a reporting obligation for previous years. Micro-enterprises are currently excluded from the scope of application.
One of Knobloch's main tasks in recent years has been to determine thecarbon footprint of the company as a whole, from the product to the process. At the end of the process, there is a balance expressed inCO2 emissions, which can be determined with the help of the subsequent reduction potentials and the CO2 compensation requirements.
The speaker explained terms such as "carbon neutral", PCF (Product Carbon Footprint), CCF (Corporate Carbon Footprint) and the processes for determining theCO2 footprint. Organizational boundaries must be defined for these processes and, in the case of a company, financial accounting (including location, operating and energy costs) can be used as a basis. There are three scopes (Scope 1-3): direct emissions (e.g. vehicle fleet, fuels, air conditioning), indirect emissions (e.g. district heating, electricity, steam) and upstream and downstream emissions (e.g. raw materials, employee commuting, transportation).
There are limits here that inevitably influence the accuracy of the calculatedCO2 footprint. These limits include the level of detail in which processes are considered or whether downstream emissions can be recorded by the company at all. With the exception of transportation to the customer, Dr.-Ing. Max Schlötter GmbH & Co. KG was unable to assess the latter. With regard to the detailed limits, it makes sense to focus on the highest cost points (i.e. the highest emission potential) in the company. For Dr.-Ing. Max Schlötter GmbH & Co. KG as a chemical supplier for surface technology companies, a high proportion is located in raw materials and transportation. In order to generate reliable calculation bases beyond the largest items, the company has recorded internal operating processes to a reasonable level of detail (e.g. forklift operation, pump and mixing operation, containers, waste water). As many processes in the company are similar, these values were extrapolated to the large number of processes in the company. Software established on the market was used to calculate theCO2 emissions.
The speaker's presentation provided interesting insights into the complexity of this topic. The Zentralverband Oberflächentechnik e. V. (ZVO) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Galvano- und Oberflächentechnik e. V. (DGO) have been offering the FRED tool at www.fred-footprint.de for surface technology companies to calculate theirCO2 footprint since this year.
