Carbon Footprint Management in Austrian SMEs: Strategies, Mitigation Measures, Challenges, and Case Studies

The term Anthropocene describes the dawn of an epoch in which human activities have become the dominant force destroying the ecosystem and causing climate change. By contributing at least one-fifth to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, industry has a significant environmental impact. Reducing these emissions requires coordinated action along the value chains building on transnational agreements and regulations. Based on the European Green Deal, EU countries and their industrial companies see themselves forced to react to emerging regulations considering their corporate carbon footprint and mitigation strategies as well as the assessment and improvement of their carbon footprints. In this paper, we report findings of case studies in Austrian SMEs that show how such companies can react to these challenges. We illustrate an approach to identify existing reduction potentials by engineering optimization and product life-cycle design to reduce corporate and product carbon footprints and prepare for future reporting regulations and achieve market advantages.