Scope 3 Emissions from Purchased Goods: Using Food Purchasing as a Case Study for Best Practices
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This work answers questions relevant to the determination of Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods: 1) how does the use of weight-based versus spend-based emissions factors (EF) affect the magnitude of emissions calculated, 2) how does using different sources for emissions factors within a same type of EF affect overall estimated emissions, and 3) what is needed to standardize and ease calculation of Scope 3 emissions across institutions, countries, and backgrounds such that the process can be automated and ensure replicable results. To answer these questions, a collaboration with seven universities across the United States was formed to share best practices and food purchasing data. This collaboration enabled the development of a python-based categorization tool to ease and standardize calculation of Scope 3 emissions from purchased foods and helped validate and expand the applicability of the results and methodologies. To understand the impact of different emissions factors on calculated emissions outcomes, the Stanford 2019 food purchasing data was used as a case study and both weight-based (kg CO2-eq/kg item purchased) and spend-based (kg CO2-eq/$ item purchased) EFs were applied to this data set. It was found that for the 2019 Stanford food purchasing case study, the largest estimated emissions were about 2.5times larger than the smallest estimated emissions, and although the range of estimated emissions for the weight-based factors is larger than the range for the spend-based factors, the average is remarkably similar at 10,543 and 11,282 metric tons of CO2-eq respectively.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | June 10, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Grekin, Rebecca |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Benson, Sally |
Subjects
| Subject | Scope 3 Emissions |
|---|---|
| Subject | Food Categorization |
| Subject | Purchased goods |
| Subject | Food purchasing emissions |
| Subject | Categorization Script |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.25740/dn946wd9147 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/dn946wd9147 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Grekin, R. (2022). Scope 3 Emissions from Purchased Goods: Using Food Purchasing as a Case Study for Best Practices. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dn946wd9147
Collection
Master's Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability
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- Contact
- rgrekin@stanford.edu
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