Possibilities for Volvo Trucks to Provide Carbon Footprint Information Derived from Environmental Product Declarations

Abstract: Along with the increasing awareness on global warming and the greenhouse gases emissionsfrom governments, organizations and individuals, carbon footprint is becoming a new popularconcept during the past two years. The concept appears to be rooted in “Ecological Footprint”and now defined as the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2equivalent emitted associated with human’s activities. It could be used to measureindividuals’ life, products’ life cycle, organization and carbon reduction projects.For the product based carbon footprint, there is no universally accepted and commonlyunderstood methodology at present. Several different initiatives are currently working ondefining methods and guidelines on how to estimate the carbon footprint. However, manyissues are under discussion.This study is conducted together by Division of Environmental System Analysis in Chalmersand Volvo Technology Corporation. The goal is to investigate on how the carbon footprintcould be adapted on the Volvo Trucks’ existing Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)system and to find the possibilities on providing the carbon footprint information based onVolvo Trucks EPD.The study clarifies what carbon footprint is, in terms of its origin, development and thecurrent situation of carbon footprint methodology developments. A comparison betweendifferent methodologies together with review and estimation on Volvo Trucks EPD identifythat the current methodologies for carbon footprint accounting are not completely suitable forVolvo Trucks. As the conclusion, a public available GHG emission profile based on VolvoTrucks’ existing EPD is suggested in a short term to fulfil customers’ demand. It would bebetter for Volvo Trucks to wait for some well-accepted methodologies on carbon footprint. Tomove further, developing a new PCR for trucks could be considered.