Seminar and Discussions: Contribution of Products to Avoided GHG Emissions

9 February 2018

Recently, some efforts are being made in Japan to guide the assessment of the contributions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in industries such as the chemical industry and the electrical/electronics industry. Local governments, such as Kawasaki City and Shiga Prefecture in Japan, have started to guide and support various actors in quantifying the contributions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of their environmental management policy. Throughout the world, there is a growing interest in the calculation of avoided greenhouse gas emissions; the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) chemicals Chemical Sector project, Reaching Full Potential, have published guidelines for calculating avoided greenhouse gas emissions, while the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is looking to the development of such methods.

The scope of these guidelines released by industry associations applies to some specific industry sectors. There is little consistent and consensual methodology for the calculation of greenhouse gas reduction contributions, including the allocation of contribution to the relevant actors. In this context, the Working Group on Assessing the Contribution to Avoided Emissions has been established by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan to identify general principles of methodologies for assessing the contribution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reviewing existing guidelines of industries and local governments. and then published “Guidelines for Assessing the Contribution of Products to Avoided Greenhouse Gas Emissions” in 2015.

The working group has discussed how the base line should be set up for each industrial sector. The results of the discussion will be reported in this seminar.

The working group recognizes that there are some criticisms to the calculation of the avoided emission. For example, it might be one of “Green washings” because it is not real reduction. The other is the anxiety on “Comparative Assertion” that is strictly prohibited by ISO-14044 (2006). The opinions to the avoided emission of the LCA experts in the world will be introduced, which are collected by the working group, and they will be discussed in this seminar.

Program is still under development.

Supported by:

• Japan Business Federation
• The Life Cycle Initiative