auma is drafting the decarbonisation plan of an industrial company by calculating the CO₂ equivalent of each materials line item. Instead of a global reduction target, the client gets the real emissions weight of each of its inputs.
Project overview
| Client | Industrial company (confidential) |
| Market | Industry |
| Practice area | Climate change · Decarbonisation |
| Location | Catalonia (Spain) |
| Services | Decarbonisation plan with emissions quantification |
| Year | 2026 |
The challenge
Most decarbonisation plans stop at a company's own energy use, which is often not where the bulk of emissions sits:
- Emissions from materials: embodied carbon in supplies can exceed the energy consumed at the plant.
- Scattered data: quantities and consumption records were built for financial management, not environmental accounting.
- The need to compare: without a common unit, measures of very different nature cannot be ranked.
The auma solution
The project translates all activity into a single unit: kg of CO₂ equivalent.
- Classification of line items and materials, assigning emission factors to each one.
- CO₂ equivalent calculated per line item, making visible which ones concentrate emissions.
- Reduction measures ranked by emissions avoided and cost, so priorities follow evidence.
The result
- The company knows the emissions weight of every line item, not just its energy consumption.
- Reduction measures prioritised in a common, comparable unit.
- A reusable calculation basis for future tenders and sustainability reporting.
Decarbonising without knowing which line item emits is like cutting costs without knowing which invoice you pay: you touch what you see, not what weighs.
Frequently asked questions
What is CO₂ equivalent?
The unit that allows gases with different warming potential (CO₂, methane, nitrous oxide) to be added together by converting them all into their carbon dioxide equivalent, according to global warming potential.
What is embodied carbon in materials?
The emissions generated in extracting, manufacturing and transporting a material before it reaches the site or plant. In material-intensive sectors it usually accounts for a very significant share of the total footprint.
How are decarbonisation measures prioritised?
By comparing, for each measure, the emissions avoided against implementation cost. That ratio is what orders the marginal abatement cost curve, showing which actions save most emissions per euro invested.
Want a decarbonisation plan built on numbers, not intentions?
We calculate the emissions of what you buy and produce, and rank the reductions by cost and impact.
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