Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)
What should you know about product carbon footprint (PCF) and how it’s coming to IMDS?
New regulations worldwide require declarations on PCFs in the near future, either on regulations on specific components, like in the EU Battery Regulation (a requirement in 2025) or as part of the corporate reporting requirements or of company pledges on carbon neutrality.
The whole automotive industry is in need of real PCF over the full supply chain, which will include Scope 1-3, however, until now, there was no established system available to communicate this specific information. To tackle this major problem, the LCA Enhancement R246 was created to include PCF into IMDS. Last year, this enhancement was clearly voted a top priority by the OEMs and the supplier associations. There’s a very clear need to add PCF in IMDS as soon as possible.
For one, the PCF value will not be mandatory for each material/component and every actor in IMDS. But rather, it depends on direct legal requirements on yourself and your B2B contracts — basically, if your customer faces legal requirements or PCF is part of their company policies.
Secondly, PCF will not be another rejection reason for IMDS data sheets. Instead, PCF reporting will follow the new enhanced reporting path, which is decoupled from the acceptance/rejection scheme of the normal, standard IMDS process. To make sure it cannot be misused, the PCF will not be visible before accepting the IMDS data sheet.
Lastly, the proper calculation of a PCF does require expert knowledge or even an expert tool to do so. A simple summarization in IMDS is not possible because PCF is a lot more complex. PCF requires additional inputs besides the received PCFs from the sub suppliers, such as internal processing or process waste.
We need to point out that the standard in IMDS that will be followed in reporting of calculated PCFs is bottom-up reporting, so it’s not about raw data. The whole calculation of the PCF is defined in the Catena-X Rulebook V2 and further explained in upcoming guidance documents. The Catena-X Rulebook was decided on after reviewing several rulebooks and was proposed by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association’s working group on Life Cycle Assessment. As detailed PCF calculation is happening outside of IMDS, only a single PCF value cannot stand on its own, but additional values and information are needed, he said.
It’s important to keep updated on the latest developments with PCF and IMDS. Watch for the annual IMDS Conference where you will hear updates to this topic and more!