Environmental sustainability and carbon footprint reduction have become crucial goals for industries worldwide. To achieve meaningful progress, accurate and standardized methods for calculating and allocating emissions are essential. In response to this need, the Pathfinder Framework has emerged, aiming to leverage and align with existing methods and standards for product emission calculations. This article provides an overview of the Pathfinder Framework, highlighting some of its main points and its alignment with various established methodologies.
What is the Pathfinder Framework?
WBCSD’s Pathfinder Framework is designed to address the lack of comparability and consistency in environmental declarations at the product level. It achieves this by aligning with and building upon existing methodologies, ensuring that emissions are accurately quantified and attributed throughout the product life cycle.
Existing Methods and Standards
The Pathfinder Framework aligns with the following established methods and standards for emission calculations:
- Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) by the European Commission.
- Product Category Rules (PCRs) by Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) program operators and other organizations.
- GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting standard, and GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) standard by WBCSD and World Resources Institute.
- ISO standards (14044/40, 14067, 14025).
Prioritization of Methods and Standards
To ensure accuracy and comparability, the Pathfinder Framework follows a prioritization hierarchy when applying different rules:
- Product-specific or sector-specific rules (PEFCRs or PCRs): Provide the most prescriptive, product-specific guidelines.
- Overarching cross-sectoral protocols and standards (GHG Protocol standards, ISO standards): Offer foundational guidance and are essential for advanced product-specific guidelines and cross-sectoral standards.
Attributional LCA Approach
The Pathfinder Framework relies on the attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to determine a product’s ex post environmental impacts. This approach attributes GHG emissions to a specific unit of a product by summing up emissions from all attributable processes along its life cycle.
Boundary and Life Cycle Stages
The Pathfinder Framework defines the boundary as a cradle-to-gate life cycle for a product. This includes all attributable upstream and direct emissions, excluding downstream emissions related to product use and end-of-life stages. Companies must organize the attributable processes into defined life cycle stages to disclose the boundary.
Functional and Declared Units
LCA inventory results are provided in functional units, describing a product’s function. Intermediate products may have several functions based on their eventual end use, necessitating the use of declared units for comparability.
Accounting for Product GHG Emissions
The calculation of a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) involves three steps:
- Data identification: Only processes immediately related to product production are assessed.
- Calculation: GHG emissions from processes are determined by multiplying activity data with emission factors.
- Allocation: Emissions are divided among multiple inputs and outputs accurately and consistently.
Additional Guidance in the Pathfinder Framework
The Pathfinder Framework offers additional guidance for specific categories, including accounting for transportation emissions (within direct activities and between tiers in the upstream supply chain) and waste treatment and recycling emissions.
The Pathfinder Framework provides a robust and standardized approach to calculate and allocate product emissions. By leveraging existing methods and standards, it ensures accurate and comparable environmental declarations across industries. Embracing this framework, companies can make more informed decisions to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a sustainable future.