BASF Coatings introduces a digital solution to assess and calculate the CO₂ footprint across its product portfolio.

BASF Coatings has introduced an advanced digital solution to calculate the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) across its entire sales portfolio. This new system replaces an in-house application that had been in use for several years, enhancing the company’s ability to provide accurate and transparent CO₂ data to customers worldwide.

With this launch, BASF Coatings now operates on an agile, real-time, and auditable global CO₂ data platform covering 120,000 sales products. The system uniformly and consistently calculates all product-related greenhouse gas emissions—from raw material sourcing and transportation to energy consumption in production—supported by automated processes. This comprehensive and traceable approach enables precise CO₂ accounting, even for complex and highly customized products such as paints with numerous color variations. The resulting data offer customers a reliable factual basis for decision-making and support their efforts to achieve sustainability and emissions-reduction goals.

“For our customers, climate protection is becoming ever more important. With our tools, we can provide them with reliable data and, on that basis, support them with solutions,” says Dr. Markus Piepenbrink, Head of Global Sustainability, BASF Coatings. “Today, for example, we already offer customers the possibility to reduce the CO2 footprint of selected products through the use of alternative raw materials and renewable energy.”

The core feature of the new PCF tool is the integration of CO₂ data from more than 25,000 raw materials sourced globally. It also incorporates the specific energy flows from over 30 BASF Coatings production sites worldwide, enabling precise emission calculations—even for individual product variants. A key innovation of the system is the inclusion of additional environmental impact categories beyond CO₂, providing valuable insights that support the development of targeted solutions to advance customers’ sustainability goals. The global rollout of the new system across all BASF Coatings production sites was executed in phases and closely coordinated with system provider SAP. As the first and largest surface solutions company to do so, BASF Coatings is now implementing SAP Sustainability Footprint Management (SFM) to further enhance transparency and sustainability performance.

“By introducing SFM, we bring together sustainability and digitization and create reliable transparency for us and our customers,” says Maximilian Bauer, Technical Project Manager Global Sustainability, BASF Coatings.

GLASS Tool adds process-level perspective to CO₂ assessment

Alongside its product carbon footprint (PCF) calculation solution, BASF Coatings also employs the GLASS (Global Life Cycle Assessment of Automotive Surface Solutions) tool for OEM customers and the EcoImpact Assessment tool for bodyshops as part of its value-added services. These digital tools offer both modular and comprehensive analyses across the entire coating process, enabling customers to gain a holistic, data-driven understanding of efficiency, quality, and sustainability performance.

By working collaboratively with customers, BASF Coatings uses these insights to identify optimization opportunities throughout the application chain—helping reduce emissions not only from BASF Coatings products but also across the broader coating process. Combining life-cycle analysis, sector-specific expertise, detailed data, and digital functionality, the GLASS Tool stands out as a unique solution in the market.

Climate protection as a strategic priority

The implementation of digital tools such as the new PCF calculation system and the GLASS Tool reflects BASF Coatings’ firm commitment to sustainability and climate protection. The company has set a target to reduce its own CO₂ footprint by 40% by 2030, compared to the 2018 baseline. To achieve this goal, BASF Coatings is pursuing emission-reduction measures across the entire value chain—focusing on sustainable raw material sourcing and transport, expanding the use of renewable energy, and integrating renewable (certified mass balance approach) and recycled (ChemCycling®) feedstocks into production.

Source: BASF