Carbon Catalogue Data Set now available in Nature Scientific Reports

In 2020 our analysis of product carbon footprints was published in Nature Scientific reports titled, “Carbon emissions embodied in product value chains and the role of Life Cycle Assessment in curbing them.”    The publication became one of the Journal’s top 50 downloaded papers in earth sciences for that year. We distributed the paper to our CoClear colleagues and received many inquiries for access to the full Carbon Catalogue dataset.

Today we are pleased to announce the publication of the full Carbon Catalogue dataset in Nature Scientific Data. Data reported to CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, was the basis to build this database of 866 product life cycle assessments (LCA), from 145 companies, 30 industries, and 28 countries. As a service to researchers and practitioners, the Carbon Catalogue provides each product with name and description, PCF (in kg CO2e) and the respective LCA protocol/standard, product weight, as well as the name, industry, and country of incorporation of its manufacturer. For a subset of 421 products, the Carbon Catalogue further includes the PCF’s reported breakdown into two to nine separate stages of the product’s life cycle. For another subset of 250 products, the Carbon Catalogue includes detailed narratives about how the respective PCFs changed and why the changes occurred.  

The Carbon Catalogue has been broadly referenced in academic work as well as utilized in the methodology of the WEF to calculate end-consumer cost impacts in their January 2021 Insight Report, “Net-Zero Challenge: The supply chain opportunity.” 

We invite you to download the Nature Data Descriptor and database here (open access): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01178-9