LCA/EPD Strategic Insight #1 — How Can Enterprises Build “Full-Supply-Chain Carbon Footprint Management”? Lessons from Midea’s Next-Generation ESG System
As the global net-zero transition accelerates, the challenge for enterprises is no longer simply “measuring their own emissions.” The real question is how to achieve full-supply-chain, end-to-end carbon footprint management—extending from products and suppliers to R&D and product design.
In recent years, Midea Group, a leading international home appliance brand, launched a “Product Carbon Management Platform,” setting a new benchmark for Asia’s manufacturing transformation.
🔧 Technical Core: Building a Carbon Management System on an LCA Foundation
Midea’s platform is built on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as its foundational methodology, integrating three major capabilities:
1. Product Carbon Footprint Management – covering raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, use phase, and end-of-life.
2. Supply Chain Collaboration Management – enabling upstream and downstream partners to input carbon data and reducing information gaps.
3. Visualization Reporting System – providing dashboards and executive-ready insights for decision-making.
This structure allows enterprises to identify true lifecycle carbon hotspots and improvement opportunities, rather than relying on rough approximations.
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🧩 Breakthrough: Built-in Carbon Factor Database to Identify High-Emission Processes
The platform incorporates a product-level carbon factor dataset, enabling automatic assessment of emissions for each material, component, and manufacturing process.
Through comparative analysis, companies can quickly determine:
• Which processes have the highest emissions
• Which materials can be substituted to achieve effective carbon reduction
• Which products have the strongest decarbonization potential
For R&D, procurement, and sustainability teams, this becomes a critical decision basis for product iteration and material selection.
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🌍 Emerging Trend: From “Carbon” to “Environmental Holistics”—Covering 37 Impact Categories
Modern carbon management goes far beyond CO₂. The platform expands environmental evaluation to 37 impact categories, including:
• Climate change
• Water consumption
• Ecological impacts
• Resource depletion
• Chemical pollution… and many more.
It fully supports EPD / PEP international disclosure frameworks, enabling enterprises to meet transparency requirements across the EU, U.S., Japan, and global markets.
As global supply chains shift toward “visible impacts,” platforms of this kind are rapidly becoming prerequisites for suppliers entering international brand ecosystems.
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🌱 SSBTi’s Vision: Building Scalable and Replicable Sustainability Solutions in Asia
SSBTi believes that carbon management is not only a compliance burden—it is a strategic opportunity for Asian supply chain upgrading.
Looking forward, SSBTi will drive progress through two major directions:
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1️⃣ Strengthen Scientific and Automated Carbon Management Capabilities
• Alignment with international methodologies
• Expansion to more product categories
• Real-time and automated carbon data collection
• Deep integration of supply chain data with R&D and design workflows
The goal is to achieve Transparent Carbon × Data-Driven Decisions × Integrated Carbon Governance.
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2️⃣ Build Replicable Green Models Based on the “Kindness+1” (善+1) Vision
With data platforms as the foundation, SSBTi will continue investing in technology, mechanisms, and cross-sector partnerships to:
• Develop scalable, replicable, and locally implementable green solutions
• Support more enterprises in aligning with global sustainability expectations
• Co-create a “Green Asia” with industry, government, and academia
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* What is a PEP (Product Environmental Profile) and what is it used for?
The 3rd party validated (Type III) PEP according to ISO 14025 provides transparent, comparable and reliable environmental data on product level, e.g on carbon footprint (CO2 eq). Standardized environmental product data is provided from the PEP in all lifecycle stages based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) calculation according to ISO 14040.
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