You’ll Never Walk Alone: PCF calculation is teamwork

Imagine the boss of a small, exclusive, Italian artisan pasta producer. And now the CEO of a major Japanese automotive manufacturer. Perhaps add a German wind turbine builder, the operator of a huge cement works in China, and the management team of an American data center. No matter how different their companies and sectors may be, they all require lubricant solutions in production, for logistics, or in administration. And you can be sure that they all share the same desire to operate efficiently and sustainably.

FUCHS has set out to support its customers in precisely this – not only with outstanding products, but with a specially developed method for calculating and transparently communicating the carbon footprint of these products (Product Carbon Footprint: PCF). Markus Garb, Vice President Global Sustainability at FUCHS, explains how this major project came about and how it could help to develop standards for the entire lubricant sector.

Mr. Garb, what were your math grades like at school?

I was an average student – good, but not excellent. What I always liked about math is the clarity with which you can describe and solve problems.

FUCHS supplies 100,000 customers worldwide with hugely different lubricants and performance fluids. The company has set out to calculate the carbon footprint of these products. That sounds like a very complicated arithmetic problem.

But the calculation itself is simple. What's difficult is the preparatory work, establishing the boundaries of the system: Which data do we need to include, which do we leave out? We gather only part of the data ourselves, such as the energy and water consumption or the amount of waste generated in production. When it comes to raw materials that we buy in, then the data comes from our upstream suppliers. However, we have to tell them exactly how they need to calculate their values so that we can compare apples with apples – and not with pears.

FUCHS wants to support its customers in operating more sustainably. Recording and transparently communicating the carbon footprint of its own products is an important prerequisite for this. How are you tackling this mammoth task?

First, we have defined which parts of the value chain that FUCHS contributes to should be included in the calculation of the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF). According to the ISO 14067 standard, a PCF must cover the entire value chain, from cradle to grave. This means: from mining the raw materials to disposal. Now we offer 10,000 products for 100,000 customers worldwide. When a product is waiting to be sold from our warehouse, we don't yet know which customer will use it for which application. That's why we have decided to limit our PCF method: it covers the journey from cradle to the gate at FUCHS. This is called cradle-to-gate.

Cooperation with our upstream suppliers is incredibly important. They need to know exactly which data we need and how it needs to be defined. We've already come a long way with our internal data, as we've been calculating the company's carbon footprint since 2011 and are continuously optimizing our data collection.

Once all of that is defined, we look at the data structures: FUCHS has many sites, and many products are produced at multiple sites. That's why some raw materials come from different sources. The data structures and calculation levels naturally have to fit with this multisourcing.

Where is FUCHS currently at in the process?

We're in the middle of a pilot project for PCF calculation at regional level – that is to say European level. The first products could be ready by the end of the year. In order to cover all products, we're largely dependent on the provision of data from our upstream suppliers. Some of them have already come a long way, others are still getting started.

In parallel to this, we are having our method checked by independent experts from Germany's TÜV technical inspection board – that's important for transparency and credibility.

What are the biggest challenges in PCF calculation?

Each result is only as good as the raw data that has been entered. As I mentioned, we're already well on the way with our internal emissions calculations. Depending on the product, however, 80 to 90 percent of the product-related emissions originate from the upstream value chain, and many suppliers are not yet as far along. Luckily, we work closely in partnership with them. Several suppliers have already published PCF method documents and much seems to be going in the right direction. This is encouraging, because ultimately we need a standard for the entire industry, what we call sector-specific standards. After all, we can only compare results with one another if we make our calculations according to a standardized method.

Compared with other industries, your sector has somewhat lower emissions. Greater potential in terms of climate protection lies with the customer.

Yes, that's the “honey pot” of the emissions calculation. When the products leave our factory, they've amassed a burden of emissions with us and our suppliers. In practical use, however, they are there to reduce friction and wear, increase efficiency, and extend the service life of machines. Unfortunately, applicable standards like ISO 14067 don't allow such “prevented emissions” to be offset against ones that were previously amassed. This is intended to prevent greenwashing. What we can do, however, is to cleanly calculate and compare both areas of the value chain – this is called a lifecycle analysis (LCA). It's a much more broadly applicable method that doesn't just take emissions into account, but also looks at other environmental effects. We also plan to develop these LCAs and the necessary skills at FUCHS.

There are currently no sector-specific standards for PCF calculation. FUCHS is a true pioneer in this area. How is the sector responding to this?

The industry has recognized that it is no longer enough to sell a product based purely on its technical suitability. In the future, more detailed information on sustainability will be critical. We need sector-specific standards on how PCFs for lubricants and their upstream products need to be calculated – with a focus on data comparability. In European associations like UEIL and ATIEL, we are actively working on developing such standards and aim to contribute to standardization with our method.

Due to the COVID pandemic and the many geopolitical challenges currently being faced, climate change is no longer as present in public debate. However, reports of extreme changes in the climate such as those being experienced in India, where temperatures sometimes reach 50 degrees Celsius, or the current unprecedented periods of drought in Europe show how urgent this global crisis is.

That's why we continue to work consistently on our products and processes at FUCHS. In many cases, lubricants are enablers for sustainable technical solutions. No company can stop this development alone; everyone needs to contribute. Climate change doesn't rest – and neither do we.