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Food Chain Programme: Assessing lifecycle Greenhouse Gases (GHG)

Aim

Direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – such as from homes, factories and transport – are relatively easy to measure. But a large quantity of GHGs are also ‘embedded’ in the products and services we consume. This project aims to make assessment of embedded GHG emissions across supply chains considerably easier. Once these emissions are assessed, their reduction also becomes more straightforward. To this end, Defra worked with the Carbon Trust, to co-sponsor the development of a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) by the British Standards Institute. This has delivered a robust and industry-wide standard to assess lifecycle GHGs in all goods and services.

  • PAS 2050 method is technically rigorous and provides a consistent and clear framework to calculate life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.  It can be applied across a wide range of industry sectors, and products including food. 
  • This carbon standard can be used to identify key sources of emissions, or “hot spots”, in the supply chain and therefore help prioritise emission reduction initiatives. It can also help businesses to innovate around the development of lower carbon goods and even phase out carbon intensive goods and services in favour of lower carbon alternative.  Finally PAS 2050 will be able to provide customers with transparent and reliable information about the carbon footprints of goods and services which can then be factored into purchasing decisions

In the longer term the project aims to influence future standards development at European Union and International Standards level.

Food products are a major focus of this work, given the complexities of their production; for example, agriculture involves significant emissions of greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide. In addition, there is a high level of public and retailer interest surrounding them.

Research

A number of key research projects are ongoing in 2008. These will inform the development of the PAS, test the draft measurement method, and provide valuable data on the greenhouse gas impacts of different sections of the food chain. The projects are:

  • ‘Scenario Building to Test the PAS’ (Defra research project FO0404). This will trial the draft PAS process on a number of food products during the farm and manufacturing stages, including: beef, lamb, pork, milk, potatoes, and bread wheat.
  • ‘Greenhouse Gas impacts of Food Retailing’ (Defra research project FO0405). This will assess the retail phase of a product’s lifecycle, studying the energy expended for lighting, freezing, chilling and heating food in different store types.
  • ‘Understanding the Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Food Preparation and Consumption in the Home’ (Defra research project FO0406). This project will examine the in-use, ‘consumer’ phase of various products’ lifecycles.

These research projects have come together to analyse the lifecycle of a cottage pie ready meal, a pdf file on this work can be found here. This shows that PAS 2050 can be used to assess a complex food product.

A further study, ‘Comparative life-cycle assessment of food commodities procured for UK consumption through a diversity of supply chains’ (Defra research project FO01303), is looking at the impacts of various imported foods, such as Brazilian beef, New Zealand lamb and Spanish strawberries. This project began in June 2007 and will report in September 2008, inputting to the ongoing work of the Food Chain Programme in determining the environmental impacts of our food consumption.

See also

Methods Review to support the PAS 2050 on measuring embodied GHG emissions in products and services

Page last modified: 29 October 2008

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs