Tracking emissions with Viridis Carbon

The decarbonization of industrial processes is one of the urgent environmental commitments that have become more challenging since the Katowice climate package at COP24. Policymakers and corporations need reliable information to develop effective policies, guidelines, and environmental control mechanisms. Obtaining transparent information on emissions from complex production processes, such as steelmaking, is difficult, as the data in steel plants is scattered across various sources, so compiling inventories and reports becomes a time-consuming process requiring greater transparency.

Digitalization is an inevitable path to the new way industries need to operate and is essential for managing vast amounts of information. It involves integrated intelligence that can transform numerous pieces of data into valuable insights. SMS has developed Viridis Carbon, a digital solution that tracks and manages emissions in the steel industry in real-time. It enables bottom-up tracking of direct emissions and offers a reliable methodology for accounting, managing, and reporting indirect emissions. In addition, it fully supports industry certifications such as ISO 50001 and ISO 14064. Certificates with directly measured carbon footprints, thereby improving the transparency and accountability of carbon emissions, can be provided for each individual product. As a result, customers can find out how green their steel is.

To calculate emissions, industrial processes are mapped, and boundaries are established for each function, thus creating a unit system. Raw material streams entering the system are considered indirect emissions generated outside the boundary limits. Emission streams generated within the system boundaries, such as particulate matter or greenhouse gases (GHGs), are regarded as direct emissions, whether these are fugitive or stack emissions. This bottom-up approach provides for an evaluation of the performance of each process within the facility, identifying improvement opportunities that may not be assessed in approaches that only consider the CO2 intensity. The methodology follows international standards and regulations, ensuring relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy, and transparency.