A rubric to evaluate carbon footprint-as a tool for what-if evaluations as an individual or as a med scale enterprise
Principal Investigator
Prof. Satyanarayanan Seshadri
Objective
- Create a framework based on M&V (measurement and verification protocols) to estimate the entire industrial carbon footprint chain from cradle to grave and minimise the harmful impact of carbon emissions from manufacturing processes and service deliveries. Promote pathways to maintain the balance with activities that minimise, potentially counteract or eliminate the effects of these harmful impacts.
Description
- Through the Industrial Energy Assessment Cell (IEAC) network, the Energy Consortium at IIT Madras is working towards establishing baselines and developing tools to assess, monitor and validate performance of energy efficiency measures. IEAC helps firms with energy audits/assessments and provides implementable solutions based on data from a recommendation bank from audits performed across sectors. These tools can be extended to assess the overall carbon footprint of a firm including its scope 1 and scope 2 emission foot print. With industry benchmarks and the data from these assessments, it would be possible to extend the framework to impute scope 3 emission footprint of a firm. As the database of industrial firms grow in the IEAC network, the accuracy of all these estimates improve due to availability of larger data sets., In order to develop such a frame-work, it is important to develop an extended tool which captures more process specific inputs in addition to the current energy related factors. The framework would have to be extended to include all resources required to transform from the basic inputs to desired outputs., Once the chain of transfer functions are established, multiple what-if scenarios and the constraints in the system to achieve them can be explored. Such analysis will also expose the critical investments required to unlock long lasting decarbonisation. It could also provide a simple carbon-star rating, similar to the current energy-star rating, paving way for signalling and behaviour change efforts.
Impact
- Effect a behaviour change in the industry vis-a-vis carbon emission and enable firms to achieve a range of benefits to its triple bottom line, which includes financial performance, social impact, and environmental sustainability