Decarbonizzare

Come il Procurement può contribuire a ridurre l’impronta di carbonio

Poiché le aziende devono far fronte a una crescente pressione per ridurre l’impronta di carbonio, gli approvvigionamenti svolgono un ruolo cruciale nel guidare questi sforzi lungo tutta la catena di fornitura. Accelerate il viaggio della vostra organizzazione verso le emissioni nette zero attraverso la decarbonizzazione strategica degli acquisti.

Come creiamo un impatto sostenibile

Significativo impatto degli approvvigionamenti

L’approvvigionamento ha un impatto significativo sull’impronta di carbonio di un’organizzazione, in quanto fino all’80% delle emissioni proviene dalla catena di approvvigionamento.

Analisi dell’impronta di carbonio e collaborazione con i fornitori

INVERTO è un partner fondamentale nel raggiungimento degli obiettivi di approvvigionamento sostenibile, sviluppando le strategie di acquisto sostenibile, analizzando l’impronta di carbonio e collaborando con i fornitori per ridurre al minimo le emissioni indirette.

PROCUREMENT: LET’S GET REAL!

Il nostro esperto Kiren sulla decarbonizzazione

What is procurement's role in supporting decarbonization?

We all understand the need to reduce emissions globally to combat global warming. Companies are under increasing pressure to do this, in particular from investors, consumers, regulators and employees. And just to give a bit of background, when you look at emissions, they fall into 3 categories, or scopes – Scopes 1, 2 and 3:

Scope 1 refers to direct emissions from a company’s own production, such as manufacturing or processing of materials
Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions related to the use of purchased energy, so if you get your energy from a coal powered source or a renewable source, that will directly impact your Scope 2 emissions
Scope 3 refers to all other indirect emissions, of which a large part is from goods and services bought from suppliers and that occur throughout the value chain

The ratio of emissions between the 3 scopes will vary based on industry, but Scope 3 can be as much as 70-90% of a company’s total emissions in industries that manufacture end-product goods, industries such as in electronics, automotive, food and FMCG.

So when you combine the fact that Scope 3 covers predominantly goods and services that are bought into a company, plus the fact that Scope 3 is often the biggest emissions areas, then the role of Procurement becomes extremely important. The ability of the Procurement function to engage suppliers and drive down emissions will directly impact whether a company is able to hit its carbon reduction targets.

What key challenges do procurement functions face when trying to reduce emissions?

Because Scope 3 emissions come from suppliers, there’s already fundamental challenge, which is that you have limited control over what your suppliers do. However, when we look more specifically at client challenges we help with, there are three key ones we see most often:

Firstly, and most common with our clients, is the lack of data and transparency. Many companies simply don’t collect data on emissions, so they don’t know the scale of the problem or where to start – even those that do collect some data may be using third-party databases and benchmarks which will be less accurate than getting it directly from suppliers

Secondly, cost: the costs and investment involved with decarbonizing can be very high. This directly conflicts with procurement’s traditional role of trying to reduce costs. I’ve spoken to many procurement teams who ask how they should balance cost against carbon in sourcing decisions for example. Other companies simply don’t have money to invest in sustainability due to recent inflationary challenges

Finally, we see a gap in expertise and knowledge around decarbonization – there’s a lot of new technology and research underway, different business models being developed and companies are trying things that have never been done before. For example: we have clients in the food sector who are trying to understand how they get farmers to switch to regenerative agriculture methods, or how to procure seaweed in bulk to use as fertiliser

And on top of these three reasons, you also have: regulatory uncertainty, a challenging macro-economic environment, technological barriers, the political landscape, limited infrastructure, resistance to change and many more – so there’s definitely a lot to take into account when making decisions and knowing where to prioritise.

How does INVERTO help clients reduce scope 3 emissions?

Our main proposition approaches the challenge from 5 key areas:

SOA: Firstly we start with the assessment phase – our Sustainability Opportunity Assessment or SOA. This is the key starting point to help build a baseline, understand your ESG procurement maturity and define key abatement levers to understand where to focus. We often do this alongside a typical cost assessment to find cost savings to fund the carbon journey – helping mitigate the challenge of investment

Then we move into design and implementation where we look at 3 main levers: (i) reducing emissions from suppliers, (ii) reducing emissions from the supply chain, and (iii) reducing emissions from products

Suppliers: When we talk about suppliers, we look at how to actively influence suppliers through incentives and disincentives, plus how you adapt sourcing processes to select new suppliers that have lower emissions. We also recommend looking more across the value chain and at the broader ecosystem – for example how can you work with your supplier’s suppliers more? Or form alliances with competitors to drive industry change?

Supply Chain: Regarding the supply chain, we start off by looking at where you should source from in the world based on emissions – so rather than re-shoring or nearshoring, we look at green-shoring. For a manufacturing client, we looked at the impact of the new CBAM regulations to advise whether they should source steel more from China or Europe. We also look at our clients’ logistics footprint to see how to reduce it, e.g. Switching from air freight to sea freight, or moving from diesel vans to Evs

Product Design: The final lever is around product design, which includes how to build sustainability into your design processes, how to conduct value engineering to redesign products and product lifecycle management

Op Model: The final fifth area we support on is Operating Model: The priority areas for clients are getting data, upskilling their teams and refining procurement processes to factor sustainability more into decision making

Using these 5 elements, we support clients on their end-to-end decarbonization journey to help them reach their carbon goals.

Il primo passo consiste nel comprendere chiaramente – e creare trasparenza – tutti i diversi tipi di emissioni:

Ambito 1: emissioni prodotte direttamente dall’azienda
Ambito 2: emissioni indirette legate all’acquisto di energia elettrica e al condizionamento degli edifici dell’azienda
Ambito 3: tutte le altre emissioni prodotte dalla catena di valore aziendale generate da fornitori, servizi e logistica

Mentre il volume delle emissioni degli Ambiti 1 e 2 è relativamente facile da determinare e rientra nella sfera di influenza diretta di un’azienda, le emissioni dell’Ambito 3 – che possono raggiungere il 70-90 % delle emissioni totali di un’azienda – sono meno trasparenti e più difficili da consultare direttamente. L’approvvigionamento, con il relativo contatto diretto con i fornitori e i prestatori di servizi, svolge un ruolo fondamentale nella mitigazione delle emissioni dell’Ambito 3.

Come sosteniamo il vostro approvvigionamento nel viaggio verso la decarbonizzazione

1. Analisi delle opportunità di sostenibilità

Delineare una linea base
Comprendere la maturità degli acquisti ESG
Definire le principali leve di riduzione per capire dove concentrarsi
Creare la propria mappa di decarbonizzazione

Spesso lo facciamo, insieme a una tipica valutazione dei costi, per trovare il modi di risparmiare sui costi al fine di finanziare il percorso di riduzione delle emissioni di carbonio, aiutando a mitigare la sfida dell’investimento

2. Modello Operativo

Utilizzare dati e strumenti per misurare attivamente le emissioni e i progressi compiuti
Migliorare le competenze dei team di approvvigionamento
Affinare i processi di approvvigionamento in modo da tenere conto della decarbonizzazione nel processo decisionale

3. Implementazione

Ridurre le emissioni generate dai fornitori

Influenzare attivamente i fornitori attraverso incentivi e disincentivi
Adattare i processi di approvvigionamento per selezionare nuovi fornitori che abbiano emissioni inferiori
Guardare all’intera catena del valore e all’ecosistema più ampio, ad esempio, promuovendo una più stretta collaborazione con i fornitori, cercando alleanze industriali e così via

Ridurre le emissioni generate dalla catena di fornitura

Definire le regioni di approvvigionamento in base alle emissioni, ad esempio, Nearshoring o Greenshoring
Garantire la conformità alle normative, ad esempio, CSDDD, CBAM e così via
Ottimizzare l’impronta logistica, ad esempio, passando dal trasporto aereo a quello marittimo o dai furgoni diesel ai veicoli elettrici

Ridurre le emissioni generate dai prodotti

Creare nuovo valore riprogettando i prodotti in modo che abbiano un’impronta di carbonio più bassa
Migliorare la gestione del ciclo di vita del prodotto, ad esempio, il riciclo, la gestione dei rifiuti e così via.

I nostri esperti di decarbonizzazione

Marianne Kaas Fürst

Principal

marianne.furst@inverto.com Contatto

Kiren Pandya

Principal

contact@inverto.com Contatto