16
F. Scrucca et al.
emissions for all kind of enterprise (also for those that do not have adequate financial/human resources for detailed calculations or hiring external experts). A summary
description of the identified calculators, together with details on the developer and
the links to access them, are given in Table 1
All the reported calculators seem to have the ability to well cover the estimation of
Category 1 and Category 2 emissions (according to ISO 14064 classification), even if
in some cases they do not allow to separate these emissions in specific subcategories.
On the other hand, the estimation of emissions falling in the ISO 14064 3 to 5
categories seem to be a little bit more problematic, since some of the calculators cover
them only partly (both in terms of covered categories and emissions typologies) and
the calculation approaches are quite different. Moreover, most of the calculators are
focused only on the calculation of CO 2 emissions and disregard the ones related to
other GHG (Fig. 2). For these reasons, most of these calculators can be considered
inadequate for detailed assessments of complex production processes (that include
GHG emissions other than CO 2 ) or companies with extended and diverse supply
chains, but rather valid for a first insight in companies CFO and useful for temporal
comparisons at the level of one company in order to monitor potential improvement.
Five of the abovementioned CFO calculators were compared by Harangozo and
Szigeti [25] using a fictitious enterprise and analyzing three different scenarios in
terms of its characteristics (different energy consumption and different suppliers
activities) in order to have input data. Their findings in terms of results consistency—i.e. in terms of capability to deliver the same or similar result using the same
input data—show a relatively low calculators reliability, with differences mainly
related to the calculation approaches (consumption—estimated or calculated based
on input data) and to different emission factors (based on differences in the country
energy mix and because of methodological differences). Scientific literature also
includes studies related to the comparison of CFO calculators focused on a specific
industry or sector, such as for instance [78], that selected different farm-level carbon
accounting tools and tested them using data from a variety of beef production enterprises, highlighting the differences between estimates produced and exploring the
reasons behind them. They also underlined that, even where estimates from different
tools appear consistent, the breakdown of an estimate may vary independently of
variation in the overall results.
The situation of calculators regarding CFP is quite different. In fact, since the
CFP quantifies and communicates the amount of GHG emissions across the whole
life cycle of a product, it is closely related to the specific supply chain of the product
itself and it is more difficult to set out a calculator generally applicable to different
kind/categories of products.
Calculators available online mainly offer the opportunity of evaluating the CF
related to different food products (see Table 2 for an indicative summary) and thus to
dietary consumers’ behaviors. All these calculators appears quite simple to use and
allow estimations based on low-level data, such as food category, food commodity
and quantity purchased. In a few cases it is possible to take into account the emissions related to the origin of the food product and the mode of transportation, but
also in these cases the evaluation is based on simple input data (Fig. 3). Kim and Neff
F. Scrucca et al.
emissions for all kind of enterprise (also for those that do not have adequate financial/human resources for detailed calculations or hiring external experts). A summary
description of the identified calculators, together with details on the developer and
the links to access them, are given in Table 1
All the reported calculators seem to have the ability to well cover the estimation of
Category 1 and Category 2 emissions (according to ISO 14064 classification), even if
in some cases they do not allow to separate these emissions in specific subcategories.
On the other hand, the estimation of emissions falling in the ISO 14064 3 to 5
categories seem to be a little bit more problematic, since some of the calculators cover
them only partly (both in terms of covered categories and emissions typologies) and
the calculation approaches are quite different. Moreover, most of the calculators are
focused only on the calculation of CO 2 emissions and disregard the ones related to
other GHG (Fig. 2). For these reasons, most of these calculators can be considered
inadequate for detailed assessments of complex production processes (that include
GHG emissions other than CO 2 ) or companies with extended and diverse supply
chains, but rather valid for a first insight in companies CFO and useful for temporal
comparisons at the level of one company in order to monitor potential improvement.
Five of the abovementioned CFO calculators were compared by Harangozo and
Szigeti [25] using a fictitious enterprise and analyzing three different scenarios in
terms of its characteristics (different energy consumption and different suppliers
activities) in order to have input data. Their findings in terms of results consistency—i.e. in terms of capability to deliver the same or similar result using the same
input data—show a relatively low calculators reliability, with differences mainly
related to the calculation approaches (consumption—estimated or calculated based
on input data) and to different emission factors (based on differences in the country
energy mix and because of methodological differences). Scientific literature also
includes studies related to the comparison of CFO calculators focused on a specific
industry or sector, such as for instance [78], that selected different farm-level carbon
accounting tools and tested them using data from a variety of beef production enterprises, highlighting the differences between estimates produced and exploring the
reasons behind them. They also underlined that, even where estimates from different
tools appear consistent, the breakdown of an estimate may vary independently of
variation in the overall results.
The situation of calculators regarding CFP is quite different. In fact, since the
CFP quantifies and communicates the amount of GHG emissions across the whole
life cycle of a product, it is closely related to the specific supply chain of the product
itself and it is more difficult to set out a calculator generally applicable to different
kind/categories of products.
Calculators available online mainly offer the opportunity of evaluating the CF
related to different food products (see Table 2 for an indicative summary) and thus to
dietary consumers’ behaviors. All these calculators appears quite simple to use and
allow estimations based on low-level data, such as food category, food commodity
and quantity purchased. In a few cases it is possible to take into account the emissions related to the origin of the food product and the mode of transportation, but
also in these cases the evaluation is based on simple input data (Fig. 3). Kim and Neff