Product Carbon Footprint

The global call for environmentally friendly production methods is now unmistakable. The manufacturers - regardless of whether they are large international companies or medium-sized companies - are required to introduce such production technologies, to use them permanently and to prove this to the public. This also results in numerous demands on the international standardization organizations such as IEC or ISO to comply with these developments by providing suitable standards and conformity assessment procedures based on them.

A well-known category in this context is the product carbon footprint. This describes the entire balance of all greenhouse gas emissions over the entire life cycle of a product.

When determining the greenhouse gas balance, the entire life cycle, which is made up of the following sub-steps, should be taken into account:

• Manufacture, extraction, processing, storage and transport of raw materials and preliminary products
• Production, storage, transport and distribution of the manufactured products
• their use and subsequent use as well as
• Disposal and recycling at the end of life.

Greenhouse gas balances are being drawn up by industrial companies to an increasing extent. At the time being this is still largely voluntary, but it is foreseeable that there will also be legal requirements for this in the future.

If accounting procedures are used in the company to create the carbon dioxide balance sheet, for example, this is done as part of carbon dioxide accounting. The so-called carbon footprint then includes the total emissions of this climate gas over a fiscal year as a key figure. Calculating the carbon footprint of an industry, product or service is a complex task. One carbon footprint measurement tool used in industry is the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The international standardization organization ISO already had the corresponding ISO standard 14040 in 2006, which specifies the framework for conducting an LCA study. The ISO 14060 family of standards also contains detailed and specific requirements for the quantification, monitoring, reporting and validation or verification of greenhouse gas emissions and ways of avoiding them or removing them safely.

Based on the many years of close cooperation between the international standardization organizations ISO and IEC, there has recently been considerable progress in the development of a conformity assessment program for the electrical industry, which can certainly also be used in other branches of industry, the International IECQ Product Carbon Footprint Verification service.

• The Product carbon Footprint Verification Service is operating as part of the IECQ Approved Process Scheme as it is the Process by an organisation to arrive at a Carbon Footprint Value that is being verified as complying with ISO 14067, not the actual value being claimed.
• This is a verification service not a full certification scheme and is being operated in accordance with the general requirements for a Verification and Validation scheme according to ISO/IEC 17029
• IECQ Approved Certification Bodies will offer an “International IECQ Verification Statement” as the certificate, which will be included on the IECQ On-Line Certificate system, meaning that that these IECQ Verification statements will be freely available to the public to check.
• The expected assessment process that the IECQ CBs will undertake in the issuing of the IECQ Verification Statements is that they will assess the process used to determine if ISO 14067 has been followed by the Organisation to arrive at their Product Carbon Footprint Claim.  As such it is expected that most if not all of the assessment nay be able to be undertaken without the need for a site visit, providing all information and access to key staff is made accessible to the IECQ CB. 
• Once the IECQ Verification Statement is issued, there is no annual surveillance required as the IECQ Verification Statement certificate relates to a specific claim and the documentation and information used at that time.
• The International IECQ Verification Statements will be valid for a 3 year period with the option of revalidating.

The current status of this service is as follows:

• Initial drats prepared by WG14 at their November 2022 meeting were issued to the full IECQ Member Bodies of the Management committee for their comment.
• Comment received was collated in MC/532/CC with the comments being considered by the WG14 Convener and IECQ Chair and Secretary and incorporated into updated A Versions of the documents, which are now being issued for formal approval by the IECQ MC to proceed to publish.  The closing date for the approval vote via correspondence is 6 April 2023..  After this date the documents will be published and the service will commence once published.

Here we have another nice example that illustrates how quickly and flexibly the international standardization and conformity assessment organizations can react to current requirements from industry and society with pragmatic solutions.