Calculate & share Product Carbon Footprint with Syensqo’s customers

Explain the context and the initiative ( Current situation, Linked to others initiatives, pre-requisites)

Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) represent the CO2 emitted to manufacture our products, from cradle to gate. 

PCF are increasingly requested by Solvay/Syensqo customers. Estimates on the requests received are of 81 (in 2022) and 100 (in 2023) for Novecare and around 500 for Specialty Polymers (Assumption based on the business information). Overall estimates amount to 700 requests per year.

Most of the requests are handled by the central LCA experts team. Some of them are also handled by Specialty Polymers SD champions in direct interaction with customers.

PCF are currently being extracted from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

LCA are performed by LCA experts, who are part of R&I, by using specialized softwares (Simapro or Gabi).

Performing a LCA from scratch can take 15 days to 4 months, and updating it with fresh data 4 hours to 15 days. 

The most time consuming tasks are:

• Collecting the data: several hours to several months, depending of the context of the project and the availability of the data,
• Performing the LCA by modeling the product(s), extracting the results and interpreting these results: from several hours to several days.

The LCA expert team count around 10 members within the R&I function.

The current process going through LCA analysis to release PCF creates several bottlenecks. This is why the PCF initiative was launched early 2022 to develop an internal calculation tool with its associated dashboarding capabilities. It currently serves the needs of Novecare as it is computing the PCF numbers on the whole commercial portfolio. The numbers are validated by a PCP process owner before release to Syensqo customers.

It is now envisioned to extend the scope to the GBU Specialty Polymers, with Augusta plant as a pilot plant for the analysis and the development of a calculation geared towards the GBU needs.

What justifies the existence of this Initiative? ‘including Group program link

With its program Solvay One Planet, Solvay/Syensqo has set ten ambitious targets to drive progress across three key pillars: climate, resources and better life.

Reducing our greenhouse gas is the first of these 10 targets, Solvay is committed to zero emissions in 2040 (2050 for SA&D) in our scopes 1 and 2, meaning emissions of our own operations.

What are the prerequisites?

The methodology to calculate the PCF is being set through industrial companies alignement. The salient one and most impactful for Solvay is Together for Sustainability, the chemical consortium influencing the harmonization of the calculation within the chemical industry.

An alignement is now needed at Solvay level to ensure the calculation is harmonized between different GBUs and avoid the "over"-customization of the solution to specific needs or scarce data. As the initiative grows, a clear ownership of the initiative at business level is to be clarified between the central corporate function and the GBUs.

Expected added value:

• More precise calculation
• More granular calculation
• More primary data taken into account in the calculation
• An easier and sounder way to manage data and the results of calculation at group level.

Estimated budget for 2024: 

• Around 2900 k€

Explain the context and the initiative (current situation, linked to other initiative, pre-requisites).summary with key items:

• Needs description
• Added value
• Budget estimated

The demands from Solvay customers has risen over the last past months and will continue to accelerate in 2024 as the industry is structuring itself within WBCSD, TfS, Catena-X and other initiatives. All markets in Novecare are now demanding PCF numbers tied to the products and customers of Specialty Polymers are even requesting PCF numbers in their quotations requests.

To handle these requests with the current process, the size of the LCA experts team would have to be multiplied by 10, and the delay to answer to the clients would not be improved due to low data availability and quality.

Due to this situation, automation of this process is required and should carry on to extend the scope to more GBUs.

The expected objective is to be able to calculate & share PCF with all our customers requiring this information. The ultimate objective is to be able to do so for the whole Syensqo portfolio. 

With this new solution we will be able to :

• Automate the data collection needed for LCA/PCF calculation 
• Calculate of PCF automatically
• Integrate suppliers’ PCF
• Share PCF with Syensqo customers

Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) are currently being extracted from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

LCA are performed manually by LCA experts, who are part of R&I, by using specialized software called Simapro or Gabi.

Intent is to extend the current scope of work of PCF initiative from Novecare to Specialty Polymers GBU and assess the capacity of Syensqo to extend the calculation principle based on available data and ways of working at the GBU level.

SD Champions, SD directors, SD team members, R&I LCA team members

1. The solution will save time to the LCA team
2. The solution should enable Syensqo to meet its customers requests in terms of PCF data
3. The solution should allow a more precise calculation with more granular and primary data

• The product deliverables are aligned and discussed with the business to serve actual business needs and requests from customers

• The product development requires a strong alignment at the business level - Which is challenging when it comes to sustainability topics as the subject is by essence multi-disciplinary and relies on a high variety of skills sets and data sources - The leadership to prioritize wisely the product development on the business side is still to be clarified
• The data landscape at Syensqo is extremely fragmented, which makes it challenging to identify an qualify the right sources of data
• The software landscape is fast moving in the area of sustainability. It will be pivotal to identify the right moment to invest in a market solution; depending on Syensqo transformation journey at that moment (inc. clone and delete and ERP evolution roadmap).

Increase productivity

Increase quality of PCF delivered

PCF data is up to date and available at commercial product level

Part of suppliers' data is increased

Other input data quality is increased

Increase Business impact

PCF platform is answering needs

PCF platform is used

• Business and data analysts
• Architects and Security architects
• Data engineers (GCP, Talend and Tableau expertises)
• BW and SAP expertises

Do you think if your initiative is compatible with a waterfall approachor with an agile approach?

• Agile model
• Waterfall model
• I do not know at this stage

Main expected results and deliverables

0/ Product continuous improvement and alignment with Syensqo transformation, including:

• Service Delivery in Syensqo
• Export Control Capabilities and security alignement with group policy
• Architecture scalability and improvements (eg. Data Ocean..etc...)
• Hypercare on Syensqo transformation consequences (eg. clone and delete on data sources, ERP transformation...etc...)

1/ Finalize current solution design within Novecare scope based on the feedbacks from the Roll-Out activities 

• Include small enhancements to the current development (eg. Energy corrections, Biogenic calculation improvement...etc...)

2/ Design an MVP solution for Specialty Polymers scope of work - Augusta plant is the target envisioned pilot scope at the moment 

• Collect internal data required to calculate a PCF/LCA

Deliverable = data stored in a data platform

• Automatize PCF calculation (based on standard calcul published by Together for Sustainability and guided by the PCF process owner at group level)

Deliverable = algorithm to calculate the PCF

• Assess the capacity to propagate the calculation beyond the MVP scope
• Roll Out the Data Governance methodology to the target GBU scope of work

3/ Mature the product design towards suppliers data ingestion and data sharing with customers

• Increasingly include suppliers’ data required to calculate a PCF in the tool

Deliverable = Data Model adapted to suppliers data ingestion

• Manage the capability to share PCF data with customers through target platform (eg. SiGreen)

Deliverable = Data Model adapted to sharing data with customers

Complete Architecture Impact Analysis (AIA)

ARB & AIA

Current Architecture for PCF

Check you have confirmed the involvement of each platform

Complete“SIP Support tool”

SIP tool excluding Export Control Data

SIP tool including Export Control Data

W&C: to be filled in to Accolade in preparation phase

TCO over 10Y: 

xxxx - Business Case/Financial evaluation 10Y

Temporary file of W&C here for PCF

Data Governance Strategise for Initiative Briefs

PCF initiative data governance

PCF business objects

There is no solution to date to serve the automated calculation of the carbon footprint at the single chemical product level. The internal initiative is thus geared towards allowing this calculation at Syensqo level.

• PCF calculation capability for GBUs in scope of work
• Dashboard capabilities to retrieve validated PCF data
• Capabilities to include suppliers data
• Capabilities to share PCF data with customers

• Faster access to PCF data
• More accurate and granular PCF data

- Is the business ambition you will support improving or not sustainability? Yes

- Will you increase or decrease the number of hardware we need to operate? How much ? No

- Will you generate or transfer an important amount of data, especially videos? How much? No