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It has become crucial for industries to work towards decarbonizing processes throughout the value chains. The guidelines published by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan （ILCAJ） in 2015, “Guidelines for Assessing the Contribution of Products to Avoided Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, provides a methodology to assess the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which can take the global spread of products and services into consideration. However, the details of the methodology are not fully explained. Here, we introduce the updated guidelines （version 2） that reflect the extensive discussions on the consideration of the global spread of products and services.

In recent years, the issue of climate change has become important, and discussion about net zero greenhouse gas emissions is in general. In this kind of situation, concept and methodology of avoided emissions of products is beginning to spread in industry sector. And, there is also an increasing number of case studies in which companies generally disclose the amount of avoided emissions from their overall organizational activities. In this background, the study group on evaluation methods for avoided emissions of The Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan is studying the guidelines on the assessment and disclosure of organizational contribution to the avoided emissions which shows a method for evaluating the avoided emissions of the whole organization. This paper introduces the background of the review and the content of this guideline.

It is crucial to spread the products that reduce Greenhouse Gas （GHG） emissions to achieve the ambitious target towards the decarbonized society. Life Cycle Assessment （LCA） can support the obtaining of a market for such products by quantifying the avoided GHG emissions through the life cycle. At the same time, there are some additional points to be noted when assessing a product's contribution to the reduced GHG emission in society. Several guidance and guidelines summarize the principles, requirements, and recommendations for assessing the contribution to avoided GHG emissions. In this article, we introduce the existing relevant guidance and guidelines published by different entities and some international standards related to the assessment of the contribution of products and/or projects to avoided emissions. We summarize the characteristic points of them from some aspects （targets of the assessment, application of LCA, calculation approaches, specific features）, which will support the practitioners to select the appropriate references according to the scope of their assessment.

In Shiga Prefecture, the CO₂ reduction contribution of products and services is listed as one item of planning and reporting in the scheme of business action planning to create a low-carbon society. Therefore, a guide for evaluating and calculating CO₂ reduction contribution was developed and a certification scheme for “Low-Carbon Brand of Shiga” based on the evaluation results was introduced to support business efforts. When developing the guide for evaluation and calculation, the objectives, evaluation targets, locations of contributions, timelines, baselines, evaluation methods for parts, materials, and R&D were issues, and these were introduced in this article. It was also introduced that the number of offices reporting the amount of contribution in the business action report is increasing steadily, and that 10 products have been certified as "Low-Carbon Brand of Shiga". To promote technological innovation originating in Shiga Prefecture and to contribute to the reduction of global CO₂ emissions, Shiga Prefecture is particularly addressing the dissemination of consciousness about the evaluation of CO₂ reduction contribution and of certified brands.

We report on the "Kawasaki Mechanism Certification System", an initiative to evaluate avoided greenhouse gas emissions in Kawasaki City. This system assesses and certificates the avoided Greenhouse Gases （GHGs）emissions of the excellent environmental technologies, products, and services in Kawasaki City by comparing with conventional technologies on the basis of the LCA method. The key feature of this system is the assessment and certification of the contribution to GHG emission reductions outside the city. Kawasaki City is promoting activities to utilize the excellent environmental technologies of enterprises within the City through this system and the "Low CO₂ Kawasaki Brand" system.

Evaluating the amount of CO₂ emission reduction of parts and materials has a problem in that identifying final applications and extracting effects of these products are difficult. However, with regards to electronic components, it is possible to quantify the amount of CO₂ emission reduction as the effect of electronic components alone, because final products are limited to electrical and electronic products or automobiles to some extent, and because electronic components consume electricity. In this study, quantifying methods shown in existing guidelines were consolidated into 3 methods to adapt characteristics of electronic components, and actual calculation formulas were set. These methods and calculation formulas were applied to evaluating the amount of CO₂ emission reductions of products, and finally, by accumulating those results, the amount of CO₂ emission reduction of TDK corporation as an organization was quantified.

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In this study, in order to achieve the greenhouse gas emission reduction target of the Paris Agreement, an education program on global warming prevention for citizens was developed and conducted. The participants were people aged 60-80 who live in Honjo city, Saitama Prefecture. The program content design was based on the pro-environmental behavior model and divided into four consecutive sections. First two sections were about global warming, and the last two were about the methods and effects of countermeasures against global warming such as energy saving in daily life. In order to confirm the effect of the education program, the participants' awareness changes were investigated before and after each section, and the energy saving behavior changes were investigated in the third and fourth section. </p><p>Regarding the results, the participants' crisis awareness and interest in global warming showed significant increase and they had strong correlation. Furthermore, after the information about specific methods of energy savings were provided, most of the participants showed positive changes in their energy saving behavior as well. With these results, the positive effect of this program was proved.

Along with the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals （SDGs）, environmental initiatives rooted in the circular economy are attracting worldwide attention. In the construction machinery industry, product remanufacturing services have substantial impacts on reducing environmental loads and maintenance cost. This article is the evaluation result of the environmental impact by remanufacturing for mining machine parts. This study focused on the evaluation of gear parts used in swing devices and travel devices of mining machines. Specifically, we quantitatively evaluated new technologies of remanufacturing by investigating each manufacturing and remanufacturing process. The result indicated that the global warming potential （GWP） of material production processes and heat treatment processes account for the large portions of the targeted parts. On the other hand, regarding the resource consumption, the material manufacturing process accounted for the majority at about 100%. These results reveal that the application of the remanufacturing technologies can reduce 20 ton-CO₂ eq in a life cycle per mining machines. In addition, resource consumption will be reduced by 5.4 kg Sb-eq / LC.

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