Measuring Scope 3 carbon emissions with digital twin

Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) recently organized a seminar on measuring Scope 3 carbon emissions with digital twin.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of real-world entities and processes, synchronized at a specific frequency and fidelity. Digital twin systems transform businesses by accelerating holistic understanding, optimal decision-making, and effective action. Digital twins are motivated by outcomes, tailored to use cases, powered by integration built on data, guided by domain knowledge, and implemented in IT/OT systems

Erich Barnstadt, Marketing Control Board Member, OPC Foundation, said we need resilient manufacturing supply chains. We need to be able to digitally provide asset data cross-platform, and combat climate change in the process.

For this to happen, the supplier needs to verify component / raw materials are within spec. It also needs to report carbon footprint and hazards of materials provided. The manufacturer needs to digitally verify data from supplier on-the-fly. It needs to calculate carbon footprint of product manufactured. It also needs to report the carbon emitted during manufacturing process to the government.

Let us try and understand carbon, and direct and indirect emissions. Scope 1 has direct emissions that result from direct emissions through the use of fossil fuels in transport, processes, or heating. Scope 2 has indirect emissions that result from production of electricity used by the company. However, Scope 3 results from supply chain emissions. It involves emissions from everything, else including purchased services or products, lifecycle of sold products, etc.

Scope 3 carbon emission sources.

Looking at the share of scope 3 emissions in manufacturing, they account for 87 percent of all emissions, with scope 1 and 2 accounting for the remaining 13 percent. Top contributors to scope 3 emissions include purchased goods at 43 percent, use of sold goods at 33 percent, upstream and downstream transport at 4 percent, each, capital goods at 4 percent, and others at 3 percent.

We need to have an asset administration shell (AAS). It is a vendor-neutral asset data sharing service. It’s a shell (container), and cross-platform, and covers the full lifecycle of the asset. It contains OPC UA info model. Microsoft is one of the authors. There is open-source implementation. HTTP REST interface is developed by SPS’22, and uses OpenOfficeXml format.

IEC 62541 is an industrial interoperability standard from OPC UA. For interoperability, it is vendor, protocol, platform and OS independent. Open Source is available on GitHub (>4.5 million source lines are contributed by Microsoft. It is scalable from sensor to cloud, and has services-oriented architecture (SOA). It is owned by a non-profit OPC Foundation. The standard has 70 million+ installed base and exponentially growing.

CESMII is Smart Manufacturing Institute. CESMII SM Profile Designer includes machine builders, system integrators, and any domain expert. It also has the CESMII SM Marketplace, CESMII SM Innovation Platform, and other smart cloud infrastructure and platforms.

An example from CESMII was demonstrated. This demonstrator interprets training unit components as part of a larger system, and applies the Carbon Reporting Information Model to each unit, and to the machine. The common Information Model for Carbon Reporting allows consistent and accurate reports to be generated at any level of the enterprise, for any asset that implements this information interface.

It is imperative that we have a much better understanding of the Scope 3 emissions, and work together.