Case Studies

We partnered with Tata Steel, which is part of India’s largest conglomerate, the Tata Group, to analyze the carbon content of steel produced through various methods. The compelling element of the pilot is that Tata Steel was able to differentiate what is effectively a commodity product on emissions grounds by using product-level emissions accounting. The accompanying panel discussion dives deeper into the Tata Steel experience.

A Southeast Asia-based company, Giti Tire, was among the first to pilot the E-liability approach. It calculated the total emissions to produce a standard passenger-car tire, a product that is both crucial to the global economy and, given its high carbon footprint, one where emissions-reduction excellence will be essential to maintaining competitive advantage. As part of its pilot, Giti Tire will now collaborate with its steel suppliers to learn how to source low-emission, high-durability steel cord that reduces resource usage and pollution over a car’s lifetime operations.

Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s leading cement producers, piloted the E-liability method focusing on a dominant contributor to cement-related emissions — the conversion of limestone into clinker. By allocating real-time, batch-level emissions to cement products, the pilot demonstrated how accurate and verifiable emissions data can inform both operational decisions and customer choices.

In 2023, we partnered with Hitachi Energy and three tiers of their supply chain to analyze the E-liabilities of electrical transformers. The case study, published in November 2023, describes the counterintuitive insights from the copper supply chain and on cradle-to-gate emissions of Hitachi transformers discovered during the pilot. The accompanying video demonstrates how the Hitachi pilot calculated and analyzed the emissions data according to the E-liability method.

In 2022, the president of Soprema, an international building materials supplier, committed to reporting the carbon footprint of each product on every customer invoice to help customers reduce the embedded GHG emissions in the products they purchased. Soprema used the Pilot Playbook to implement the E-liability methodology in a pilot focusing on the company’s bitumen waterproofing systems. Soprema estimates a potential emissions reduction of 34% from the project.

A world leader in serving science, Thermo Fisher Scientific, undertook a pilot to understand the embedded emissions in its 96-well PCR plate, a widely used molecular biology tool for scientific research and molecular diagnostics. It engaged with its Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers to obtain primary data and identify “hot spots” for emissions reduction opportunities which, in turn, will inform its business strategy and investment decisions.

In 2023, we partnered with IDG Security, a security services firm working in high-threat locations, to conduct a pilot project in Afghanistan. They began by identifying the major activities associated with providing that daily service together with “overhead” activities, such as running their headquarters out of Dubai. IDG then gathered data on the emissions generated in their major activities, discovering to their surprise that 38.5% of their total emissions came from feeding their staff. Lastly, IDG allocated the costs to personnel categories, which allowed their customer, the UN, to see clearly what the emissions impact would be for each unit of service in Afghanistan purchased from IDG.

Our most recent case study is with BMW Group, which piloted the E-liability approach on a highly customizable part of its iX range of electric cars: the radiator kidney grille. The pilot addresses a common challenge: working with suppliers who lack the capacity to calculate their embedded emissions. This article explores how BMW Group helped equip suppliers for direct emissions measurement and establish protocols to audit data at the source, ensuring data accuracy from the start.