Topics
The carbon footprint of products
Manufacturers and suppliers increasingly have to document the carbon footprint of their products – SMEs included.
Why now
Beyond the tailpipe
The EU wants to cut CO₂ emissions from new cars sharply by 2035. Under the Commission’s 2025 proposal, the cut would be 90 % instead of 100 %, with the remaining 10 % offset, for example through low-carbon steel or alternative fuels. This brings the whole life cycle into view: raw materials, processes, batteries, energy.
Manufacturers’ fleet targets are about 93.6 g CO₂/km for cars and 153.9 g CO₂/km for vans until 2029, then 49.5 and 90.6 g from 2030. Exceeding them costs €95 per gram per new vehicle. From June 2026, manufacturers can also voluntarily report the footprint of whole vehicles using a harmonised EU method.
For suppliers this means customers ask for the footprint of individual components – “cradle to gate” – and increasingly for real data rather than averages. Through the Catena-X data network, manufacturers and suppliers already exchange such values in a common format.
Method
The footprint in four steps
1. Define goal and scope
What is assessed, for what purpose and within which boundaries? Usually “cradle to gate”. Plus the functional unit – for example a seat performing its function over the vehicle’s lifetime.
2. Collect data
Bill of materials with materials and masses, energy and consumables of processes, transport, waste. Your own measurements are primary data; where they are missing, databases such as ecoinvent or Base Carbone help.
3. Apply emission factors
Each attributable activity is multiplied by its emission factor: activity (e.g. kWh) × factor (kg CO₂e per kWh) = footprint in kg CO₂e.
4. Interpret and use
Where are the largest shares? Which variants help – recyclate, other processes, shorter transport? And how is the result communicated to customers, with assumptions and limits?
Example
A car seat
Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld carried out a case study to DIN EN ISO 14067 for a car seat – “cradle to gate”, using greenable software and ecoinvent 3.12 database values (February 2026).
236.68 kg CO₂e per seatTotal footprint, materials and assembly
172.48 kg CO₂e · 72.9 %Raw materials and pre-processing
64.20 kg CO₂e · 27.1 %Production (assembly electricity)
Where the material footprint arises
- Electrical components 73.28 kg CO₂e · 42.5 %
- Metal structure 39.40 kg CO₂e · 22.8 %
- Seat accessories 19.17 kg CO₂e · 11.1 %
- Cushion foam 17.27 kg CO₂e · 10.0 %
- Plastic trim 10.72 kg CO₂e · 6.2 %
- Upholstery 8.16 kg CO₂e · 4.7 %
- Safety components 3.71 kg CO₂e · 2.1 %
- Elastomer parts 0.78 kg CO₂e · 0.5 %
Shares relative to raw materials and pre-processing (172.48 kg CO₂e).
- Almost three quarters of the footprint lies in the materials – in line with the experience of the French automotive platform PFA that raw materials often account for more than 70 %.
- The largest single item is the electrical components, mainly due to copper, followed by the steel structure. Material choice, recycled content and supplier data are the levers here.
- The production share here consists solely of assembly electricity. With renewable power it drops considerably.
This is a methodological case study using database values and estimated electricity consumption, not the footprint of a specific series product.
Tools
What to calculate with
greenable
Software for product carbon footprints and digital product passports to ISO 14067 and the GHG Protocol – used for the example above.
openLCA
Free life cycle assessment software that works with various databases.
CLIMOBIL
Online comparison by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology: car emissions over the whole life cycle, including the distance after which an electric car comes out ahead.
AWAC tool
Tool of the Walloon Air and Climate Agency for organisational greenhouse gas accounting under the GHG Protocol – at company level, not product level.
Our carbon footprint tool
The demonstrator for processes in your own production, with templates for welding, drying and assembly – see Demonstrators.
A guide (“vademecum”) on the carbon footprint of automotive products, including a comparison of tools, is in preparation.
Book an appointment
Are you an automotive company in the Greater Region?
Then talk to us about your topics. Book an appointment – on site at your company or by video conference.
- CO₂ measurement
- Life cycle assessment (LCA)
- Re-X strategies
- Re-X methods
- Digital product passport (DPP)
- Trucks and logistics
- Ecodesign
Re-X: reuse, repair, remanufacture, recycle. DPP: digital product passport, which brings together data on a product’s materials, origin and CO₂.
Your first consultation
- Free of charge for companies from the Greater Region
- Two hours on site at your company or online
- Or half a day at the university – with the demonstrators
Request an appointment or contact your local contact directly