Infineon Adds Emissions Figures to Products

Infineon has launched a new initiative to provide its customers with comprehensive Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data. The company has initially provided the PCF data for about half of the products that it offers, and will expand the data until it covers the company’s full product portfolio. PCF data quantifies the greenhouse gas emissions associated with an individual product, allowing the comparison of climate impact between different products.

Environmental issues and sustainability are becoming more important to industry as they try to cut their own environmental footprint. Being able to easily see the environmental impact of the components they use will make it simpler for them to make purchasing decisions and meet their own green goals across the whole supply chain. The PCF data supplied by Infineon will give that information to those customers who want to increase transparency on their own carbon footprint.

As there are currently no established industry standards, Infineon has developed its own methodology to calculate the PCF number, which took into account customer needs and best practices.Included in the figure are emissions from raw materials and supplies, its own manufacturing processes, manufacturing partners and transportation to the customer. This means that the Product Carbon Footprint reported by Infineon covers scope 1 and 2 emissions as well as scope 3 emissions from suppliers and manufacturing partners. The Product Carbon Footprint is expressed in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kg CO 2e).

Martin Hackenberg, Head of Climate Strategy and Energy Management at Infineon explained how the figure is calculated, “We start with all the upstream emissions in the supply chain from raw material extraction until it reaches us - Scope 3 emissions. Then we look in detail at our own operations, including Scope 1 emissions from areas that are owned or controlled by the company. We also take into account the energy consumption from individual product lines and allocate them to the product. After that we include internal and external transportation right up to the gate of the customer. We also use the PCF number in our own operations to optimize and to streamline our activities”.

The assessments of product families that have been calculated are then placed on the Infineon website.

Infineon has already pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 for direct and indirect emissions (scope 1 and 2). Last year, the company additionally committed to setting a science-based target encompassing supply chain emissions (scope 3).

Corinna Wolf, Head of Sustainability at Infineon laid out the company's plans by saying, “To become carbon neutral by 2030, we will avoid direct emissions and reduce the greenhouse gasses that we use in production. To assist in this process, we have installed abatements in all of our front end manufacturing. This has already helped to significantly decrease the carbon footprint from production. We are also working on increasing energy efficiency inside the organization, including expanding that climate strategy to the supply chain”.

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