Development of a tool-CF: a decision-support calculator to assess the impact of different suppliers

Abstract

Assessing the greenhouse gas emissions is nowadays a fundamental method included in the strategy of the companies which want to pursue the path of sustainability and be competitive on the market. Moving in this direction means, indeed, assessing the life cycle of products, organizations, and services, estimating their impact in kgCO2eq and developing effective strategies to reduce it. In this thesis, a carbon footprint calculator, named tool-CF, is developed so that the customer company can use it to evaluate which would be the climate change impact of upstream and core phases of a photovoltaic module production based on the suppliers’ choice of materials necessary to realize it. The CF development is based on the LCA methodology “cradle to gate”: the analysis consists in assessing which would be the impact of the upstream phase, where the kgCO2eq/module generated by the production of components, auxiliaries and packaging are estimated, and the core process phase, where the kgCO2eq/module generated by the transport and assembly of the module are estimated. This calculator was built with Excel spreadsheet which has been divided in three sheets: “Data Entry”, where the customer company will enter data about quantities of materials and distance covered from supplier location, “Impacts”, the sheet where the formulas have been entered to assess which is the impact in terms of global warming potential of each process, and the “Results”, where the total GWP (Global Warming Potential) of upstream and core process phases are summarized. In the end, the use of the tool-CF is supported by a document describing the correct procedure for using it.