Carbon management framework for sustainable manufacturing using life cycle assessment, IoT and carbon sequestration

Abstract

Purpose

Emission reduction methodologies alone are not sufficient to mitigate the climatic catastrophes caused due to ongoing carbon emissions. Rather, a bidirectional approach is required to decarbonize the excess carbon in the atmosphere through carbon sequestration along with carbon reduction. Since the manufacturing sector contributes heavily to the ongoing carbon emissions, the purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for carbon emission reduction and carbon sequestration in the context of the manufacturing industry.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, life cycle assessment (LCA) is employed to track the carbon emission at each stage of the product development life cycle. The pre-requisite for this is the accurate evaluation of the carbon emissions. Therefore, IoT technologies have been employed for collecting real-time data with high credibility to perceive environmental impact caused during the entire life cycle of the product. The total carbon emission calculation is based on the bill of material (BOM)-based LCA of the product to realize the multi-structure (from parts and components to product) as well as multi-stage (from cradle to gate) carbon emission evaluation. Carbon sequestration due to plantation is evaluated using root-shoot ratio and total biomass.

Findings

A five interwoven layered structure is proposed in the paper to facilitate the real-time data collection and carbon emission evaluation using BOM-based LCA of products. Further, a carbon neutral coefficient (CNC) is proposed to indicate the state of a firm’s carbon sink and carbon emissions. CNC=1 indicates that the firm is carbon neutral. CNC >1 implies that the firm’s carbon sequestration is more than carbon emissions. CNC <1 indicates that the firm’s carbon emission is more than the carbon sink.

Originality/value

The paper provides a novel framework which integrates the real-time data collection and evaluation of carbon emissions with the carbon sequestration.

Citation

Mishra, S. and Singh, S.P. (2021), "Carbon management framework for sustainable manufacturing using life cycle assessment, IoT and carbon sequestration", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 1396-1409. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-01-2019-0044