Policymakers and investors in the U.S. and worldwide are moving to require that companies accurately measure and manage the impact of the greenhouse and chemical emissions of their products and services. However, the manner often used to measure emissions is imprecise and easily challenged. The Environmental Genome’s product-level greenhouse gas emissions and intensity data will allow extensive, credible climate-risk disclosures. The EG also provides the extensive, transparent framework for research into the role that environmental pollutants play in causing chronic diseases. This large, open-source database is already of sufficient size to allow new research and for-profit applications. We believe it will yield other large, unforeseen economic and health benefits, just as mapping the human genome enabled.
The nonprofit Environmental Genome Initiative was founded in 2017 by more than a dozen individuals with extensive and diverse professional expertise, with an emphasis on chemical engineering, human health science, and nonprofit management.
Founder and Executive Director Michael Overcash PhD. is a chemical engineer and an environmental specialist who has researched industrial pollution prevention since 1980. Michael has served on seven National Academy of Science committees, on scientific advisory committees for several offices of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force, and numerous corporate pollution research and planning groups.
“My life’s work has been developing ways to reduce industrial environmental impacts. I am excited to provide the information companies need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our climate, fueling increasingly unpredictable and dangerous events, and harming human health.
Here’s the problem: One of the leading ways in which life cycle professionals use to calculate these emissions today utilizes an imprecise method called economic input/output analysis. The method determines the level of greenhouse gas emissions based on two variables – an industry average for the sector and the level of investment. The results are insufficient to support credible Scope 3 reporting of the indirect emissions of a company’s manufactured products and the upstream and downstream activities in its value chain that regulators and investors really need.
Instead, we are mapping the carbon footprint of the 100,000 chemicals-in-commerce used to make virtually all materials and products worldwide. These data will allow the next generation of life cycle inventory analyses that will rapidly and accurately calculate the emissions and greenhouse gas intensity data needed for credible climate-risk disclosures. These chemicals are the core of product environmental footprints. Current databases offered by Ecoinvent, SimaPro and Sphera, owner of GaBi software, have only about 500 separate CAS-numbered chemicals while the EG already has over 2,000, thus enabling broader coverage and structure of for-profit applications. Additionally, the EG provides some of the most detailed, transparent process evaluations that are foundational for improvement at the manufacturing plant level as well as whole supply chain impacts.”
– Environmental Genome Initiative Founder and Executive Director Michael Overcash PhD.
The worldwide movement toward government-mandated disclosures of greenhouse gas emissions will impact of pubic companies, and inevitably their suppliers, all reliant on a life cycle industry with datasets still in development. EG’s database is many times larger than its closest competitor.
Manufacturing Analysis and Improvement
The EG chemical profiles also include the entire supply chain mapped back to natural resources in the earth. The database contains high quality, substantially transparent, and engineering-based data files. Our methods are the next generation in the life cycle field, providing accurate emissions and greenhouse gas intensity data and also supporting:
Public health information related to all the products we consume
The database is already of sufficient size to allow a variety of users, researchers from private enterprises, academic institutions, NGOs, and developers globally to begin designing and building new applications. We believe this open source database will yield other large, unforeseen health benefits as mapping the human genome did.
Public health information related to all the products we consume
The worldwide movement toward government-mandated disclosures of greenhouse gas emissions will impact of pubic companies, and inevitably their suppliers, all reliant on a life cycle industry with datasets still in development. EG’s database is many times larger than its closest competitor.
The worldwide movement toward government-mandated disclosures of greenhouse gas emissions will impact of pubic companies, and inevitably their suppliers, all reliant on a life cycle industry with datasets still in development. EG’s database is many times larger than its closest competitor.