Catalyst Zero Product

Catalyst Zero

With Catalyst Zero Product, companies can reduce the carbon footprint of their products where the potential is the greatest—before they ever land in users’ hands.

The transition to a sustainable economy requires products that are designed differently, made differently, and used differently. Our research shows that up to 80 percent of a product’s footprint arises from choices encountered in design and manufacturing. This means that the next frontier of decarbonization lies in these two vital stages—ones that have traditionally been difficult not only to assess but also to capture.

Experience Catalyst Zero Product

Leaders are asking how they can reduce the carbon footprint of their products to reduce risk, capture new opportunities, and support their customers in achieving their own climate goals. Powered by McKinsey’s proprietary digital tools, Catalyst Zero Product can help you find and remove carbon from your product portfolio at unprecedented speed and scale.

How we help clients

Catalyst Zero Product identifies opportunities to reduce carbon across the entire value chain—from design and sourcing of materials to production—while optimizing cost and value.

Our proprietary tools assess the costs and carbon emissions of your products at the same time so you can quickly understand trade-offs and identify the most effective, highest-return abatement opportunities.

Drawing on a robust database of digital value chain twins, covering more than 750 materials, we can simulate your entire value chain from the bottom up, customizing results to meet your needs and identifying decarbonization actions your suppliers can take at every step of the value chain.

And because finding opportunities is just the first step, we bring our decades of experience in to help you turn these opportunities into reality at speed.

Benefits

Access the latest emissions factors

Systematically track Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions across the entire value chain of your product or portfolio of products

Run decarbonization scenarios

Compare different design, manufacturing, and supply chain options simultaneously

Re-envision procurement processes

Decrease emissions from purchased materials, as well as logistics and other parts of the supply chain

Track progress

Develop a centralized product catalog and track progress through McKinsey’s proven WAVE offering, optimized for Catalyst Zero

Examples of our impact

Extending Danfoss’ climate ambitions to its products

For a leading industrial components manufacturer seeking to tackle its sizable Scope 3 emissions across its product portfolio, we deployed Catalyst Zero to uncover abatement opportunities across five critical products, identifying a pathway to 90 percent emissions reductions with negligible incremental costs.

Read the case study

Paving the way to a zero-carbon truck and new approach to decarbonization

We supported a commercial vehicle manufacturer in its ambition to be a global sustainability champion and to decarbonize across an entire product lifecycle. Using Catalyst Zero, we identified opportunities to reduce upstream emissions by more than 60 percent by 2030, and more than 95 percent by 2040.

Making the business case for green steel

For a new green steel producer, we used Catalyst Zero to demonstrate and position the vital role that green steel can play in decarbonizing industrial sectors, including in automotive, construction, yellow and white goods. The findings shaped the client’s outreach strategy to investors and prospective customers alike.

Related Expertise

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Sustainable Materials Hub

McKinsey’s Sustainable Materials Hub empowers organizations to solve the sustainable materials challenge and achieve carbon reduction commitments through the production and sourcing of low-carbon materials.

Resource Cleansheet

Resource Cleansheet maps a product or service’s cost and CO₂ footprint along its entire value stream and life cycle.

Featured insights

The zero-carbon car: Abating material emissions is next on the agenda

Experience Catalyst Zero Product

How we help clients