Knowledge A Detailed Explanation of the Importance and Benefits of Using IT for Carbon Neutrality

Global companies often encounter the following challenges when calculating and disclosing CO2 emissions across their entire supply chains:

To calculate CO2 emissions throughout the supply chain, companies must organize a massive amount of data and plan company-wide initiatives. However, it is often unclear where to start or which step should be prioritized, causing many companies to stumble during the initial planning stage.

Collecting data for Scope 3 (indirect emissions) tends to be more challenging than for Scope 1 and 2 (direct emissions) because it requires the cooperation of business partners and suppliers.

Accurately estimating the personnel, systems, and time needed for data collection and management is also difficult, often leading to inadequate preparation. Furthermore, insufficient training and unclear guidelines can impede the calculation process.

A major challenge at overseas branches is the shortage of local staff with the necessary knowledge and skills for calculating CO2 emissions. Additionally, obtaining cooperation from local suppliers is often difficult, leading many companies to only achieve partial calculations. In some cases, the collected data may contain gaps or errors. When such issues occur across the supply chain, proper verification becomes extremely challenging.

Calculating CO2 emissions requires familiarity with data analysis tools and calculation models. Lacking that understanding, there is a risk that errors may go undetected and inaccurate figures might be reported.

Global companies must contend with varying emission factors and calculation standards from country to country. As a result, headquarters must integrate and oversee multiple calculation methodologies, a process that is both time-consuming and burdensome.

Furthermore, because overseas offices may not be as strongly governed by the headquarters, managing IT usage and standardizing operational flows becomes more difficult. This can lead to inconsistencies in systems and data management across different locations.

Many companies manage their CO2 emissions using Excel. However, such legacy operations face several issues:

Manually collecting and entering CO2 emission data increases the likelihood of errors and omissions. Mistakes with numbers or units, as well as missing entries, can significantly impact overall calculation results. Inaccurate data means that the calculated emissions will not reflect the actual situation, potentially leading to inappropriate planning and reporting for reduction measures.

While some companies have automated the data entry process, real-time updating across multiple locations can still be challenging and can delay decision-making.

When data from various locations or suppliers is provided in different formats or units, it must be converted and standardized before aggregation. Creating a unified data format often requires a great deal of time and effort.

Even if aggregation is automated, missing entries or errors in the calculation logic can necessitate manual review and correction. This undermines the efficiency of operations, especially when handling complex and large volumes of data, such as those involved in Scope 3.

Emission factors used to calculate emissions vary depending on the energy source and region, and they must be updated regularly. In Excel, these updates must be performed manually, which increases the risk of omissions.

Excel cannot directly import real-time primary data from sensors and other systems. This limitation makes it difficult to perform up-to-date analyses, increasing the risk that decisions based on outdated or inaccurate data may lead to errors.

Achieving carbon neutrality involves a range of processes, including visualizing CO2 emissions, reducing them, substituting energy sources, and offsetting emissions. Leveraging IT services allows companies to comprehensively address all of these processes.

IT tools help in efficiently collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data. By utilizing these tools, companies can drive company-wide carbon neutrality initiatives based on accurate, up-to-date data.

Cloud-based IT tools can consolidate data that has been managed separately across various locations, allowing for central management. They can also automatically standardize data from differing formats and units and visualize it on dashboards for real-time monitoring. IT tools also make it easier to analyze and identify processes or areas with high emissions, thereby supporting the implementation of efficient reduction measures.

For example, KDDI’s “Factory IoT Visualization Solution” uses sensors to automatically collect primary data from factory equipment and production lines and transfers it to the cloud, enabling real-time visualization. In addition to gathering primary data, the solution helps prevent errors and omissions typical of legacy operations, supporting accurate decision-making through centralized, cloud-based management and real-time analysis.

Establishing an automated system to update the latest emission factors and energy usage data can prevent delays and mistakes associated with manual updates.

In addition, when production plants and departments can reliably share accurate, real-time data, interdepartmental collaboration is strengthened. This contributes to better understanding of emissions and more effective implementation of reduction measures.
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Visualizing CO2 emissions on the cloud offers several benefits for both on-site operations and headquarters:

By centrally managing data on the cloud, the processes of collecting, inputting, and aggregating data can be automated. This eliminates the need for manual data conversion and standardization, significantly reducing labor. In addition, having a unified input format minimizes errors and improves the reliability of calculation results.

Since emissions data from all locations are uploaded to the cloud in real time, managers can make decisions based on the most current information. With data managed in a unified format, comparisons across multiple locations become straightforward. Visualizing trends in CO2 emissions by location also facilitates the development of detailed reduction strategies, leading to more efficient and effective outcomes.

Using cloud services helps address challenges related to global governance, enabling headquarters in Japan to supervise and control overseas operations more effectively.

Furthermore, by applying unified global emission factors and calculation standards, companies can achieve more reliable analyses. Automating data aggregation and visualization in the cloud eliminates the need for manual data processing, and instant reporting is an added benefit.