Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try and Morgan Sindall are to trial new technology that could provide automated, real-time reporting of Scope 3 carbon emissions. The contractors are working with Aggregate Industries and software provider Causeway Technologies on the pilot.
Scope 3 emissions are indirect carbon and greenhouse gas emissions from a company’s supply chain. They include the production and transport of concrete, steel and timber.
The initiative involves a software solution that Causeway says can deliver a verifiable and scalable way to measure Scope 3 emissions in real-time, using invoice data that is automatically extracted.
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In initial tests, Causeway worked with samples of 25,000 invoices from Aggregate Industries, Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and Galliford Try, focusing on materials with the highest carbon impact. It says the system is capable of addressing embodied carbon figures down to line-level items such as tools and plant purchases.
“Few construction product suppliers find it easy to provide consistent transaction-level data on the full carbon emissions of their products,” said Dr Adam O’Rourke, Causeway’s emerging technologies consultant. “Causeway’s Scope 3 initiative provides contractors with an accurate, consistent and automated reporting tool that reflects the actual materials and products used, not just what was planned.”
The project is also being supported via a partnership engagement with the Engineering Department at the University of Bath.
Causeway says accurate measurement of Scope 3 emissions is seen as one of the biggest challenges to reducing the construction industry’s carbon footprint.
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