TfS: Overiew and Activation

This article provides an overview of the TfS (Together for Sustainability) 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, see the linked articles on Base Data and Allocation.

What is the TfS standard?

TfS (Together for Sustainability) is an industry-wide standard for calculating and exchanging Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) in the chemical industry and its supply chains. It defines binding methodological requirements—set out in the TfS PCF Guideline and the TfS PCF Data Model—so that PCF values can be calculated consistently, compared, and exchanged in a machine-readable format between companies.

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

How is TfS activated?

The standards to be applied are defined when creating a report. In the "Create report" dialog, select the desired standards under "Applicable standards." 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 afterwards. Therefore, define the required standards already when creating the report.

What does activating the TfS standard do?

When TfS is active for a report, the standard is visible in the report header. Activation affects the following areas:

Base Data: System boundary (cradle-to-gate) and reference unit (declared unit). The cut-off rule is prefilled with 0% (permissible range 0–10%). In addition, the field "Net weight per declared unit" is displayed. For a field overview, see the Base Data article.
Allocation: A predefined selection of allocation methods is available. For details, see the
Allocation article.
Emission factors: TfS only permits ecoinvent emission factors from versions 3.11 and 3.12. When TfS is active, the following functions are not available: searching for spend-based emission factors, selecting a predefined standard activity via a dropdown menu, and searching for activity-based emission factors from databases other than ecoinvent.
Data: tbd