Blockchain enabled Cloud Computing based integrated Carbon Calculator (Be4C)

Start date: 1 September 2022
End date: 1 September 2023
Principal investigator: Dr Sushma Kumari (University of Hull)
Co-investigators: Dr Jyoti Mishra (Leeds University Business School), Dr Dhaval Thakker (University of Hull)

Description

Global warming is an alarming issue for the whole of humanity. The beef supply chain is one of the segments of the food industry that has a considerable carbon footprint throughout its supply chain.

The major emissions are occurring at beef farms in the form of methane and nitrous oxide gases. The other carbon hotspots in the beef supply chain are abattoir, processor, logistics and retailer.

There is a huge amount of pressure from society and government authorities on all business firms to cut down carbon emissions.

The different stakeholders involved in the beef supply chain, especially small and medium-sized stakeholders, lack technical and financial resources to optimize and measure carbon emissions at their end.

Existing carbon calculators help individual beef supply chain stakeholders to understand carbon emissions within their firm, but at present, there is no system available to calculate and minimize the carbon footprint of the entire supply chain and make this information available and visible to all stakeholders in a transparent and secure way.

This project is funded by the STFC Food Network+.

Research overview

In this project, we are planning to develop a Blockchain-enabled Cloud Computing based Carbon Calculator where all stakeholders of the supply chain can measure, visualize and minimize carbon emission of the whole supply chain within reasonable expenses and infrastructure.

The integrated approach of mapping the entire beef supply chain by a single cloud will generate the transparency, reliability, trust, and security of a record by improving the coordination among its stakeholders.

The system boundary of this study will be from beef farms to retailers, involving logistics, abattoirs, and processors.

The proposed system will catalyze a step change in building relationships between technology, decision-making, and planning for reducing emissions. It will help multiple stakeholders of the beef supply chain to operationalize net zero strategies and make real changes to their business to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.