Product References and Variations Endpoint version: V1 (preview 2)V1 (preview 2) ADD-ONADD-ON

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Until now, we’ve looked at manufacturing and Simple Components, which are components that map directly to an emission factor.

In many cases, you might have more details about a product, if you are e.g. producing it yourself. If we continue with the hammer example, perhaps you are actually smelting the hammer heads yourself in a different factory, from iron ingots.

In that case, we can create a PCF for the hammer head, and reference it in our hammer PCF. Conceptually it looks like this, where “Hammer Head” is its own PCF:

In this case, creating the hammer head PCF could look something like this, where for each hammer head manufactured we use 1.5kg of iron ingots and natural gas corresponding to 8kWh:


{
    "product": "Hammer Head",
    "location": {
        "query": "Stockholm"
    },
    "manufacturing_year": 2025,
    "manufacturing": [
        {
            "type": "fuel",
            "fuel_type": "natural_gas",
            "amount": {
                "energy": 8,
                "energy_unit": "kWh"
            }
        }
    ],
    "end_of_life": {
        "include_end_of_life": false
    },
    "components": [
        {
            "type": "simple",
            "product": "iron ingot",
            "production_year": 2025,
            "weight": {
                "weight": 1.5,
                "weight_unit": "kg"
            },
            "location": "Eisenerz"
        }
    ]
}

The response we get back will include a product_id and a version_id. A product reference is always to a version_id, so we’ll specify that in our Hammer head.

In our Hammer PCF, we can specify a Product Reference like this:


	"components": [
		{
			"type": "reference",
			"version_id": "d05f4c3c-a733-42bf-9419-92b68a5f6928"
		}
        // remaining simple components
	]

This means that the PCF for the Hammer Head that we’ve just created, will be used as input for the new Hammer PCF. This is how you can model more complex manufacturing relationships, particularly if you manufacture subproducts yourself.

Product References and Boundaries

There are some things to be aware of in regards to how product references work with the different boundaries:

When referencing a product, the cradle-to-gate of the referenced product is added to the final product.
The materials used in the referenced product is also added to the end-of-life of the final product (if end-of-life is included for the final product). The referenced products do not need to have an end-of-life calculation for this to work.
The use-phase of a referenced product is discarded, as it’s not necessarily representative of the use-phase of the final product. You should specify the use-phase of any final product explicitly, when estimating that product.

Variations

The last important concept to grasp for modeling complex supply chains is product variations.

It is common to purchase things from several different suppliers and countries, and then treat them identically when they enter into your supply chain. As an example, you might know that you’re buying 70% of your iron ingot from Australia, and 30% from Brazil.

In this case, you would create a Variations object, where you specify that ratio.

When calling the API, you would create the Hammer Head PCF like this.


{
    "product": "Hammer Head",
    "location": {
        "query": "Munich"
    },
    "manufacturing_year": 2025,
    "manufacturing": [
        {
            "type": "fuel",
            "fuel_type": "natural_gas",
            "amount": {
                "energy": 8,
                "energy_unit": "kWh"
            }
        }
    ],
    "components": [
        {
            "type": "variations",
            "variations": [
                {
                    "ratio": 0.7,
                    "component": {
                        "type": "simple",
                        "product": "iron",
                        "production_year": 2025,
                        "weight": {
                            "weight": 1.5,
                            "weight_unit": "kg"
                        },
                        "location": {
                            "query": "Melbourne, Australia"
                        }
                    }
                },
                {
                    "ratio": 0.3,
                    "component": {
                        "type": "simple",
                        "product": "iron",
                        "production_year": 2025,
                        "weight": {
                            "weight": 1.5,
                            "weight_unit": "kg"
                        },
                        "location": {
                            "query": "Brasilia, Brazil"
                        }
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Climatiq will then automatically handle transportation from the different locations, and weighting of the values in the final PCF, so that the results are correct when 70% comes from Australia, and 30% from Brazil.

When you’re ready to dive further into PCFs, take a look at the API Reference to explore all the capabilities.