From €1,075 to €53: The cost of manual product footprinting in the global chemicals industry

Few industries are under as much scrutiny for product-level emissions data as the chemical industry. As decarbonization pressure intensifies—especially upstream, beyond direct operations—the need for accurate, transparent product footprinting has become both urgent and strategic.

Chemical companies need to calculate and provide Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs), because their customers (downstream) must report on Scope 3 and therefore need to know the footprint of their raw materials.

There is a rising increase in customer inquiries for product footprint data from chemical companies, that they simply cannot keep up with. The lack of product footprint calculation capabilities at scale, is estimated to bring 30% of the revenue at risk for the largest chemical companies.

We are in the age of positive carbon discrimination, which refers to a market phenomenon where, given a choice between products of the same price and quality, their carbon weight can be the deciding factor for buyers. Additionally, product footprints are a required and decisive element in the buying process (RFPs).

Companies that can calculate, verify, and confidently share product-level carbon data are beginning to unlock a powerful competitive edge. As demand grows for traceable, auditable information across the value chain, the ability to deliver reliable emissions data is becoming a key driver of commercial value—and trust.

Challenges and priorities for the chemicals industry

• Regulatory pressure: Increased regulatory pressure to calculate and report Scope 3 data - the European Union's increasingly stringent environmental regulations are saddling global chemical companies with more than $20 billion in annual costs (Source)
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• ‍Need for accurate PCF calculations: Most of the emissions lie in Scope 3.1 “Purchased goods and services”. Calculating Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) forms the basis for Scope 3.1 reporting, making it a top priority to remain compliant and competitive. (Source). However, calculating PCFs in the chemicals industry can be particularly challenging. The process to compute PCFs is super manual, long, and costly and on average, can cost somewhere between 8-10K for a single Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) from a consultancy.
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• Lack of good data: The existing data landscape is very muddy, with poor quality data from multiple different sources. There is no way for chemical companies to forecast, model, see patterns, and no ability to use data to drive strategic decision making, without undertaking a painful manual data standardization effort.
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• Lack of transversal alignment on the importance of PCFs: Difficult to onboard and engage very different teams, apart from sustainability, even though it is critical for business growth and protecting the existing business.

Manual vs. AI-powered footprinting: A 95% cost reduction per SKU

For many companies, product footprint calculations still rely on highly manual processes. While this may work for a handful of products, the approach quickly breaks down at scale—driving up costs, slowing down decision-making, and increasing the risk of errors. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• High-effort data collection: Input data is often scattered across different systems and business units. Collecting the required data points—such as energy usage, material inputs, and process emissions—requires significant manual effort from multiple stakeholders.
• Manual data entry into calculation tools: Once collected, all data must be manually entered into local PCF tools, increasing the risk of human error and inconsistencies in methodology. The tools are typically legacy tools and do not prove to be adequate in terms of volume, quality, usability, integration and efficiency.
• Lack of collaboration and transparency: Calculation models and PCF results are stored locally, preventing easy sharing or peer review across teams. This creates silos, limits transparency, and hinders the development of standardized approaches across the organization.
• Inefficient reporting workflows: Final PCF results must be manually transferred into predefined Word templates before they can be shared with internal or external requestors—adding time and friction to the reporting process.
• Fragmented data management: Each division may track and store calculated PCFs in its own way—using tools like Excel or Access—making it difficult to maintain a centralized, consistent overview of footprint data across the organization.

Our calculation with customers reveals that it typically costs around €1075 per SKU to compute footprint manually, as opposed to €53 per SKU when done leveraging our AI computation tool.

Chemical companies that do not upgrade will be left behind

As the demand for precise product environmental footprints intensifies, chemical companies must scale product-level measurement to their entire portfolio.

Climate leaders who choose to prioritize this will have a head start on regulatory compliance, enhance trust with their customers, protect their revenue, and reach Net Zero faster.

Technology like CO2 AI enables all companies, regardless of their maturity, to efficiently compute and manage emissions across thousands of products, ensuring data accuracy and facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain.