The Detmold-based electronics company is a founding member of the new “Estainium” network for the determination and secure disclosure of carbon footprints along the supply chain.
Detmold. The challenge of our time, climate change, is caused by the excessive release of harmful greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere. The carbon footprint was developed to measure this impact. It is intended as a means to allow companies to determine how much they pollute the air with harmful greenhouse gases such as CO2 during production. But there’s a problem: the carbon footprint is not measured in a standardised way and does not take into account all the links in a supply chain. With the help of the cross-company cooperation network “Estainium”, Weidmüller wants to make the measurement of carbon footprints much more accurate. In addition to the Detmold-based company, 14 other founding members belong to the association – among them international corporations such as Siemens, the Japanese IT service provider NTT Data and the German chemical and pharmaceutical company Merck as well as industry giants such as TÜV Süd (German Technical Inspectorate).
The “Estainium” association enables the large-scale exchange of the actual carbon footprints of a product, including emissions generated by suppliers and their subcontractors. “A large part of a carbon footprint is created in the supply chain. Only a fraction of it is actually measured using conventional methods,” explains Speaker of the Executive Board and Chief Technology Officer Volker Bibelhausen. Up to now, carbon footprints have usually been determined using average values. “We can only become climate-neutral as an industry if we know where the emissions are being generated. With Estainium, we’re making the supply chains transparent. We work in an open ecosystem and we harness the power of data. That’s our offer to customers, partners and competitors. This is our contribution as a company to a better future,” says Bibelhausen.
“Only when other members besides Siemens and Weidmüller get involved in Estainium will the whole venture be a success,” emphasises Dr Eberhard Niggemann, Director of Public Affairs and member of the board of Estainium. He is confident that the network will grow quickly. “Many companies are showing interest. There should be more than 50 participants by the end of the year. Many more in the long run.”
Although Estainium is initially focusing on CO2, the association may expand to cover other aspects over the long term. “In the future, Estainium may also be extended to include water and energy consumption in general or to making the recyclability of a product measurable,” adds Volker Bibelhausen.