TJ Yoon: Why Glassdome is Coming to Europe

Glassdome is coming to Europe for two main reasons.

The first is that our product carbon footprint solution is targeted at EU regulations like CBAM and the EU Battery Directive, and that regulation is widely affecting the automotive and battery industries. We needed to be at the heart of Europe in order to follow this regulation closely, figure out the latest status of the regulation, and see how manufacturers within the EU are responding to this regulation. So we were looking at cities in central Europe.

The second is that some of our great partners like Siemens and Systemiq are located in Munich. That made it easy to choose which city we wanted to be in. We’re getting a lot of help from them in setting up an entity and meeting new clients.

Naturally, I’ve been following a lot of competitors and services that provide a similar value proposition, which is getting through this regulation and then getting yourself verified for PCF and other sustainability regulations. There are consultancies who can help you go through PCF calculation and then verification. There are also companies that do consulting with software so that you can monitor yearly calculation results.

But there’s no other company who has our expertise in data gathering from manufacturing sites. Glassdome is the only solution I’ve found that can actually gather data from the manufacturing site and process it in a way that can be calculated into PCF on a monthly basis.

That’s the differentiating factor that we have. That makes us the true complete solution that can be deployed to a manufacturing site for PCF calculation.

Until now, if you wanted to calculate your PCF, that would mean two to three months of data collection and you’d end up with just one year of data sitting there to share with your customers or regulators. After 9 – 10 months it’s very old data. You can’t see it in a dynamic way.

By having real-time data, or close to it, you can analyze your product carbon footprint, figure out the seasonality of it, and figure out the hot spots that you need to tackle in order to decrease the product carbon footprint.

The goal is not to just calculate PCF. The goal is to make sure you can reduce your product carbon footprint. And to do that, you need data at hand to do a lot of different simulations and analysis. Without real-time data, you can’t really do it.

With our solution, you can see electricity consumption in real time, you can see raw material usage in real time. You’re better equipped not just to respond to calculating PCF, but also looking into the future in terms of decreasing your carbon footprint.

One other thing that I want to mention is that the regulations are actually shaping up to require you to use company-specific data. That’s another reason why we think having the Glassdome solution that automatically collects the data will be better for manufacturers going forward.

Carbon accounting is very different from product carbon footprint calculation. Carbon accounting looks at your company as a whole, but product carbon footprint is very specific.

A PCF is very detailed in terms of the required dataset. You need to look deep into specific processes and specific SKUs. It’s a bit more technical, and it’s difficult to go through it without the data and specific LCA (life cycle assessment) knowledge at hand.

A partner I’m excited to work with is Siemens’ SiGREEN solution, which is a platform that we’re working towards integrating with. It provides a PCF management platform while Glassdome provides the PCF calculation platform. So we really complement each other. I’ve been talking with guys from Siemens a lot about how we can approach the market together, and work together to help clients. I’m very excited to work with them. They’ve been very helpful for me and for Glassdome as we get started in Europe.

Systemiq is the other big partner that I’m really excited to work together with in Munich. Systemiq has been the central piece of the Battery Pass, a consortium funded by the German government to go through what needs to be done for companies to meet the EU Battery Regulation. The consortium includes partners from companies like Audi, and they’ve gone through the regulation together to figure out what manufacturers have to do in order to respond. Systemiq provides us with great knowledge in terms of how to handle regulation in the carbon footprint realm.

They’ve also been very helpful in terms of figuring out what we need to do to be prepared for the battery regulation and how we can help manufacturers that are struggling to calculate their product footprints.

All of these partners have clients who are responding to the battery regulation or other sustainability issues. We can be very useful to those clients as a PCF calculation and monitoring partner.

Our capability to gather data from the shop floor and turn it into a product carbon footprint and then actually get that verified with third party help helps their clients solve their needs.

By introducing us to their clients, they can equip their clients with a partner that can calculate product carbon footprint and help them get their product carbon footprint verified.

We’ve been engaging with SiGREEN, Cofinity-X, and Catena-X to make sure that, even though we’ve built our own network to share PCF data along our supply chain, customers have many options.

In order for you to accurately calculate your PCF, you need not only your own electricity or raw material usage data, but also your suppliers’ product carbon footprint. That means that if you’re a supplier, you have to provide your data to your customer and potentially your OEM.

That’s why we’ve been investing a lot of our time in figuring out what networks that we should be connected to so our customers can submit or receive PCF data in a very easy manner. That differentiates us from many PCF calculation tools because they don’t have connectivity with these networks. We do, and it will grow as we develop ways into different networks from different countries or companies.

Our network is just starting, and we have plans to integrate with a wide variety of emerging networks so we’ll be more beneficial for more customers.

Yes, absolutely.

I think we have the best of both worlds, right? We have people who understand European regulation and who understand the Korean way of working. That’s why we’ve been getting a lot of traction in Hungary, where many Korean manufacturers have established their European entities or factories. I think that’s definitely an area where we’re hoping to get a lot of traction.

I get surprised sometimes when I talk to companies who are selling to the EU that don’t know about or haven’t prepared for upcoming regulations, especially the battery regulation. It states that you need to prepare a carbon declaration to import to the EU without penalties.

Originally it was supposed to go into effect this month. It’s been delayed, but a year from now you will need a product carbon footprint declaration verified by a third party in order to sell your battery in the EU. It’s a lot of work. Some companies have been preparing for it, but some don’t have a clue.

Making sure you know what each regulation is asking for is key. These regulations are geared towards two different things. The first is carbon accounting. The second for manufacturers is PCF. People often don’t make that distinction, but it’s two different ballgames, and you need to equip yourself for both.

While being able to do carbon accounting might help on the carbon accounting side, it doesn’t solve the problem of product carbon footprint or vice versa. So you need to be clear on what your needs are, what you need to be able to respond to each type of regulation, and which type of data you need to provide to your customers or regulatory bodies.

No matter what happens in the US, I’d say the EU will stick to carbon-based tariffs, because their primary target was not actually the US, it was about China and protecting their own manufacturers. So it’s not going to be a direct battle between the EU and US.

I think companies who are affected by EU regulation will still have to use Glassdome. This US tax tariff is interesting because carbon-based tariffs actually provide a very good basis for taxation. That could be a good measurement that could be used as a tariff scheme. So it could be used in the US as well, which would only increase how useful we could be to global companies.

Schnitzel! I’ve been eating it a lot, I’ve already had it four or five times.

I’ve been a Manchester United fan since Ji-Sung Park was the team, but I have to say I’m watching more Bayern Munich games these days. I might have to buy a scarf.