In future, this should enable industrial companies to track emissions that arise during the manufacture of products along the supply chain until they are offset: This means first using Sigreen to determine the real_{CO2 footprint} of a product along the supply chain, then deriving measures for avoiding_CO2 and finally offsetting currently unavoidable emissions by purchasing_{CO2 certificates} from trustworthy climate protection projects via BayWa Carbon Connect. Only projects in which_CO2 is stored, for example in biomass or humus, will be selected for the joint pilot project.

Uniform quality standards for climate protection projects

The combination of both software solutions should make it possible in future to pass on information about carbon offset projects along the supply chain to other companies. This should be done without restricting the data sovereignty of suppliers and sub-suppliers. This makes it possible to digitally define and anchor uniform quality standards for carbon offset projects within a company's own supply chain. In future, manufacturers will be able to find out whether and with which projects their suppliers' products have been offset.

"A continuous, trustworthy and certified process, from the generation of unavoidable_{CO2 emissions} to the final removal of these emissions from the atmosphere, is the declared vision of this joint pilot project," says Dr. Gunter Beitinger, SVP Manufacturing, Factory Digitalization and Sigreen at Siemens and 1st Chairman of the Estainium Association.

"Until now, companies have only been able to trust the neutralization and offsetting measures of their own supply chain to a limited extent due to a lack of transparency. I am convinced that with the combination of BayWa Carbon Connect and Sigreen, we are paving the way for uniform quality standards within the supply chain and thus initiating an important transformation step towards credible emissions offsetting in the industry," says Steffen Winkler, Business Unit Lead in IT Products and Services at BayWa AG and Head of BayWa Carbon Services.

First concrete use case at the Siemens plant

Siemens is demonstrating a specific use case based on its own production at the Amberg site: the company is offsetting the_{CO2 emissions} caused by the production of selected products from the Simatic S7-1500 controller family during the project period from January 1 to December 31, 2023. The emissions of the supply chain up to the factory gate ("cradle-to-gate") are taken into account here. The Amberg electronics plant has demonstrably reduced_CO2 by 49% between 2015 and 2022 and has set itself the goal of being_CO2-neutral by 2026. Emissions from the supply chain are also being reduced through various measures. For example, Siemens relies on the use of sustainable materials and cooperation with suppliers to reduce product-specific_{carbon footprints}. The plant received the World Economic Forum's Sustainability Award in 2023.

Sigreen

With Sigreen, Siemens already enables its customers to determine and exchange product-specific emissions along entire supply chains on the basis of real data. This enables manufacturing companies along the value chain to quantify the effectiveness of measures to use renewable energies, save resources and shorten transportation routes. To increase the trustworthiness of the data, Siemens relies on cryptographic keys and the involvement of independent certification authorities. Sigreen is part of the open, interoperable Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.

BayWa Carbon Connect

The BayWa Carbon Connect software is the digital arm of the BayWa Carbon Services business unit. It helps companies to combine holistic climate management with trustworthy emissions offsetting, supported by digitalization. This means that climate protection projects must meet quality criteria, including the type of climate protection technology, traceability of emissions reduction, project size or location, in order to be included in the portfolio. This makes them particularly transparent and credible. Projects implemented by BayWa itself are evaluated and monitored using remote sensing, and individual project measures are documented in BayWa Carbon Connect. BayWa Carbon Connect can exchange data on the acquired neutralization or compensation projects with other software systems via digital interfaces. The registers accessed by BayWa Carbon Services ensure that_{CO2 certificates} are not claimed more than once.

The design of the data interfaces and selection of the climate protection projects during the pilot project were carried out in close cooperation with the Estainium Association. By working together, Siemens and BayWa are supporting the association's vision of achieving the industrial sector's net-zero targets with the help of digital technologies.