Kingfisher
At a Glance
Industry
Industrial Goods and Manufacturing
Project Types
Industrial Energy Efficiency, Supply Chain
Year
2017
Location
Shanghai
Summary
Zhenyang Chen helped improve Kingfisher’s carbon management program and identified energy savings opportunities for its suppliers.
Goals
To boost its sustainability strategy, Kingfisher Offer & Supply Chain HK & SH, the sourcing organization affiliated with a British home improvement company, Kingfisher Plc, has launched a carbon management program aimed at improving the carbon footprint of its supply chain. Kingfisher plans to continue its carbon management program, but wants a better understanding of its current carbon emissions, energy management strategy and energy saving initiatives designed for its 2016 Top-100 suppliers in China. As part of this goal, EDF Climate Corps fellow Zhenyang Chen was hired to identify energy saving potential for cutting suppliers’ costs and carbon emissions.
Solutions
Chen redesigned and distributed a set of questionnaires to gather carbon emission and energy efficiency data from Kingfisher’s suppliers. Having this data, she analyzed the total carbon emissions, emission structures and emission trends in Kingfisher’s supply chain over the past three years, and identified the product category and sub-category with highest and lowest carbon intensity. After identifying three suppliers that had reached the national carbon trading threshold, Chen recommended strategies.
Chen then evaluated the recent average level of energy management status of Kingfisher’s Top-100 suppliers, identifying both the bottlenecks and target key areas for improving their energy performance. She identified the widely-used energy saving initiatives among Kingfisher’s suppliers, such as HVAC, power, lighting, air compressor, injection molding machine, blow molding machine and others. She also summarized information on implementating lighting retrofit projects, waste heat recovery projects and solar PV panel projects in suppliers. After completing the analysis on carbon emission and energy efficiency, Chen advised Kingfisher on how to better proceed with carbon management in the future, including how to guide suppliers to provide high quality data and verify the reliability of that data.
Potential Impact
Chen’s work will help Kingfisher better identify opportunities for improving energy efficiencies, encouraging sustainable practices and potentially cutting costs and carbon emissions for its suppliers, bringing the company closer towards meeting its sustainability goals. The questionnaires were adopted as part of Kingfisher’s carbon management program.