Covestro: Digitally calculates the carbon footprint of 50,000 intermediate and finished products

● Covestro digitizes product-specific Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

● Environmental data for about 50,000 intermediate and finished products. These products are validated by the end of 2024 to gradually provide customers with data on finished products in 2024

● Covestro Cloud Computing provides innovative software solutions for LCA calculation of proprietary products

To make the circular economy a reality and achieve climate neutrality by 2035, Covestro promotes a number of projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions are generated by the company itself through the use of energy in the production process and the entire value chain (including upstream suppliers and downstream customers).

Covestro’s climate impact during the manufacturing of its products can be assessed using the products’ cradle-to-gate carbon footprint, which can be automatically calculated for around 50,000 intermediate and finished products. These results are currently being validated to be progressively available to customers in 2024. At the same time, Covestro continues to provide data through manual processes using life cycle assessment tools and methods certified last year by TüV Rheinland Energy GmbH according to ISO 14040/44 and ISO 14067. The automation of the calculations will enable Covestro to determine the specific carbon footprint of products across its entire product range and determine the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Covestro plans to provide its customers with data on the products it sells in the future, thus contributing to the assessment of emissions and subsequent potential reductions on the customer’s part. In addition to the carbon footprint, the digital solution also calculates other environmental impact categories such as acidification or photochemical ozone generation potential.

This calculation takes into account the raw materials used, the energy consumed, the direct emissions generated and the emissions to the waste streams generated during the production of the product. The calculation is based on Covestro’s internal plant and site-specific data as well as external databases such as raw material data and specific raw material data from suppliers, if available. The calculated figures include intermediate and finished products, which means that the entire value chain of the product right up to Covestro’s door is taken into account.

Lynette Chung, Chief Sustainability Officer at Covestro, explains: “We all want and need to reduce our emissions along the value chain – this applies not only to us at Covestro, but also to our suppliers and customers. Our customers’ request Clear: provide data on all our products and look for opportunities to reduce emissions.”

Digitization is a core component of generating sustainability data

Covestro has already taken a big step forward in automatic calculations. Information on material and energy consumption is extracted from existing data sources and systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and merged with data from cloud databases. For this, Covestro uses the product sustainability platform of AllocNow GmbH. The software company specializes in the automatic calculation of life cycle assessments of chemical products. In the future, further supplier data can also be reflected in the calculations.

“In 2022, our product portfolio has around 50,000 intermediate and finished products. The artificial calculation of life for just one It took days for the cycle assessment data. By combining and using these data, we can now calculate the greenhouse gas emissions of a single product during the production process. It is possible to retrieve the annual re calculations and future process changes. Our software solutions are developed directly in the cloud.” Covestro does not have to maintain server capacity for the annual recalculation of LCA data, but can expand computing capacity as needed. Therefore, the company is very resource-conscious when using server services and makes a further contribution to its sustainability goals.

Dr. Catherine Lövenich, Group Innovation project manager: “Covestro’s artificial life cycle assessment calculation process has been audited according to ISO 14040/44 and 14067 and was certified by TüV Rheinland Energy GmbH last year. Now, we are Pursuing further certification for the automated method according to relevant ISO standards and Together for Sustainability (TfS) guidelines is complex. Take MDI as an example, which is a typical precursor for insulating foam. Covestro buys the raw material benzene and then utilizes Energy and other raw materials, which are converted into finished MDI through several intermediate products. All these steps and the use of raw materials are included in the carbon footprint calculation of a specific MDI type”. For Covestro, the quality of methods and data are both important, so Covestro needs to verify the results. Validation of the data should be completed by the end of 2024. During this time, current manual methods will continue to support customer needs.

Digitalization is a major driver for improving sustainability and enabling a circular economy. Covestro’s business management will become more data-centric to achieve digitalization.type. Currently focusing on three sectors: production, research and development, and supply chain management.