Assessing the Carbon Footprint of Global Supply Chains in Manufacturing Industries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22816347Keywords:
Scope 3 emissions, carbon footprint, supply chain decarbonization, life-cycle assessment, manufacturing industry, GHG Protocol, embodied carbon, industrial ecologyAbstract
Scope 3 emissions embedded in upstream supply chains often dominate the total carbon footprint of manufactured
goods, yet cross-sectoral comparisons using consistent life-cycle assessment methodology remain scarce. Here we
quantify cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions across three manufacturing sectors, electronics, textiles, and
automotive assembly, using harmonized hybrid life-cycle assessment combining process-based bill-of-materials
data with environmentally extended input-output analysis for 42 tier-1 and tier-2 supplier facilities across 14
countries, benchmarked against the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard. Emissions were
apportioned across raw material extraction, component manufacturing, assembly, and first-tier logistics, and
compared against each firm's Scope 1 and Scope 2 disclosures. Upstream Scope 3 emissions accounted for a
mean of 78% of total cradle-to-gate footprint across the sample, ranging from 63% in automotive assembly to 87%
in electronics manufacturing, driven primarily by energy-intensive semiconductor fabrication and rare-earth
processing. Textile supply chains showed the highest emissions intensity per unit revenue but the shortest
upstream tier depth. Facilities sourcing grid electricity in coal-dominant regions showed cradle-to-gate footprints up
to 2.4 times higher than comparable facilities in renewable-dominant grids, identifying supplier electricity sourcing
as the single largest modelled decarbonization lever, ahead of transport-mode switching and packaging redesign. A
sensitivity analysis indicated that supplier-specific primary activity data reduced footprint estimation uncertainty by
roughly half relative to secondary industry-average emission factors. These findings indicate that Scope 3
disclosure frameworks relying predominantly on spend-based secondary data substantially understate both the
magnitude and tractability of upstream manufacturing emissions, and that targeted supplier electricity
decarbonization, rather than logistics optimization alone, offers the largest near-term abatement potential across the
manufacturing sectors assessed.
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