Product Manufacturing
Manufacturing is an assessment of the energy it takes for the factory manufacturing needs of a given product.
To calculate GHGs associated with product manufacturing, HowGood uses the product type/sales category and location of the manufacturing facility. Products are grouped into categories based on similar manufacturing processes. Customers can choose the manufacturing type which best describes their product, or HowGood can make a reasonable assumption based on the sales category.
The energy needs of each process or subprocess associated with the production line is collected/estimated from energy or environmental assessments and life cycle inventories as MJ/kg product. They can include refrigeration and lighting but exclude overhead operations, employee transportation, and manufacturing of the equipment. We base our estimates on the manufacturing category of the product (frozen entree, cold case milk, chips & snacks, juice beverages, etc). For example, the manufacturing energy required to make yogurt or kefir would include mixing of ingredients (fruit, etc), culture/fermentation process, sterilization of equipment, sterilization of jar/vessel, heat sealing process, and refrigeration.
HowGood then uses the total energy consumption and the carbon intensity of electricity at the manufacturing location to calculate the associated emissions due to the product manufacturing.
When customers have conducted product LCAs and can provide manufacturing energy data with enough granularity to map to our inclusions and exclusions, we can ingest that data and create a customer and product(s) specific manufacturing type.
See the last paragraph in Processing for limitations and planned changes.