Sellafield Carbon Footprint Tool

The recording and forecasting of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e) is key to Sellafield’s ability to understand and modify their carbon footprint. To maximise efficiency, they had a vision for a modelling tool that would enhance and streamline this process.

ITI Group (formerly Saker Solutions) worked in partnership with Sellafield Advanced Business Analytics (SABA) to deliver a solution which holds current, historic and forecast data, and acts as the central database repository for carbon related information.

The tool displays information on where environmental savings can be made and when, and provides an understanding of the impact of on-site infrastructure projects. Thanks to the collaboration and deep understanding between ITI Group and Sellafield, the team were able to deliver the project at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, taking just twelve weeks from development to completion.

I was particularly impressed with how quickly the teams were able to develop such an effective solution. We now have instant access to a much wider range of reporting, which creates a deep understanding of our environmental impact, and the data experimentation capability is invaluable.

Paul Beck, Infrastructure Sustainability Advisor – Sellafield

Configurable Tree Structures

The tool centres around a user-configurable, intuitive, graphical tree structure, allowing users to define the site as a structure of nodes, branches and ‘leaves’ which hold the data and associated support documentation to provide an audit trail.

This allows the users to see the facility in terms of the available data rather than forcing the business into a fixed common structure. Different parts of the tree can represent major facilities, utility types, projects and individual equipment.

Clear, Accessible, Custom Data

The intranet based solution provides easy and secure access via users’ existing logon authentication. Custom functionality at an individual level means that a variety of users can view the data relevant to them: from a simple results display; to new data input functionality; up to experimentation on different scenarios.

The user friendly interface gives clear, graphical interpretation of results, is configurable for any portion of the data and allows drill-down to the level of detail required for specific facilities or functions.

The intuitive tool makes it easy to create a custom data structure to model CO2e either by plant, function, or a combined notional area of site. Users also have the ability to enter data in a variety of carbon equivalent formats or to include carbon offsets, and they can then superimpose real or potential events which could influence CO2e.

Categorising Carbon Emissions

The tool allows users to add tags to categorise the data in terms of emission types, carbon offsets and different ‘scopes’ of carbon emissions:

Scope 1

The greehouse gas emissions that Sellafield make directly from the running of stream plants vehicles etc.

Scope 2

Emissions generated indirectly from the consumption of bought in electricity etc.

Scope 3

Indirect emissions from the production of products or services purchased from the supply chain (possibly the largest but also most difficult to calculate).