PACT: Overview and Activation

This article provides an overview of the PACT standard in Climate Hub: what it is used for, how it is activated for a PCF report, what changes upon activation, and which areas are affected. For field-level details, please see the linked articles on Base Data and Allocation.

What is the PACT standard?

PACT (Partnership for Carbon Transparency) is an initiative aimed at standardizing the exchange of Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) across companies. The PACT Methodology (Version 3.0) defines methodological requirements for the calculation, data quality, and verification of cradle-to-gate PCFs. This enables a consistent, comparable, and interoperable exchange of PCF data between companies across the value chain.

In Climate Hub, you can select the PACT standard when creating a PCF report. This fixes certain inputs and restricts the choice of individual methods.

How is PACT activated?

The standard to be applied is set when a report is created. In the "Create Report" dialog, select the desired standard under "Applicable Standard." You can choose between ISO 14067, Catena-X, PACT or TfS.

Important: Only one standard can be selected at a time; selecting multiple standards simultaneously is not possible.

The standard selection cannot be changed after the report has been created — no additional standards can be added afterward. Therefore, make sure to define the required standards already at the time of report creation.

What does activating the PACT standard do?

If PACT is active for the report, it is displayed in the report header. Activation affects the following areas:

Base Data: System boundary (cradle-to-gate) and reference unit (declared unit) are fixed. For certain units, the field 'Net weight per declared unit' appears. For details, see the Base Data article.
Allocation: A defined selection of allocation methods is available. For details, see the article Allocation.
Emission Factors: PACT only ecoinvent emission factors from versions 3.11 and 3.12 are available. The following features are not available when PACT is activated: search for spend-based emission factors, selection of a predefined standard activity via a dropdown menu, search for activity-based emission factors from databases other than ecoinvent.

Software limitations

Calculating PCFs under PACT requires two metrics: "PCF excluding biogenic CO2 uptake" and "PCF including biogenic CO2 uptake." The corresponding ecoinvent IPCC 2021 indicators ("total excl./incl. biogenic CO2") reflect these metrics in their basic structure, but deviate slightly from the PACT definition in two respects:

The "excl. biogenic CO2" indicator sets biogenic CO2 emissions and uptake to zero together (0/0 approach), whereas PACT excludes only the uptake and still expects emissions to be accounted for with their real value.
Land Management Removals are an optional disclosure under PACT ("may report") and are therefore not included in the calculation by default.

Both points tend to result in a more conservative estimate of the calculated PCF (i.e., rather too high than too low).