Introduction: Environment Management

The environment management application component helps companies to stay compliant with emissions-related environmental regulations. The solution covers the processes and sub-processes of managing compliance scenario activities to ensure compliance. These processes enable you to create and incorporate a strategy for managing environmentally-related data from data collection, sampling, calculation, and aggregation of emissions into the daily operations within your companies.

Managing environmental reports

With this new 2022 release, you can create environmental reports and get a summary of the available environmental data in the system. The app provides a framework for creating summary reports that can serve as a guide on how to create environmental summary reports. You can use the reports to fulfill legal and internal reporting requirements. In addition to reports containing current environmental data, you can also make up a snapshot of projected environmental data based on the setup of compliance activities for a future period. The app provides an example template for managing greenhouse gas reports.

Background

Accordingly, at the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris, the international community agreed to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C when possible and to keep it below 2 °C.

This can only be achieved if global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are rapidly reduced.

The GHG inventory covers the seven direct greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol:

• Carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Methane (CH4)
• Nitrous oxide (N2O)
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
• Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
• Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)
• Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)

These gases contribute directly to climate change owing to their positive radiative forcing effect. HFCs, PFCs, SF6, and NF3 are collectively known as the ‘F-gases’.

In general terms, the largest contributor to global warming is carbon dioxide which makes it the focus of many climate change initiatives.  Methane and nitrous oxide contribute to a smaller proportion, typically <20%, and the contribution of f–gases is even smaller (in spite of their high Global Warming Potentials) at <5% of the total.

Also reported are four indirect greenhouse gases:

• Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
• Carbon monoxide (CO)
• Non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC)
• Sulfur dioxide (SO2)

Nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and NMVOCs are included in the inventory because they can produce increases in tropospheric ozone concentrations, and this increases radiative forcing (warming of the atmosphere). Sulfur dioxide is included because it contributes to aerosol formation which can either warm (through absorption of solar radiation on dark particles) or cool (by forming cloud droplets and reflecting radiation) the atmosphere.

Related Information

For more information about greenhouse gas emissions, see

• SAP News
• The mechanism for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions

Key features

With this Manage Greenhouse Gas Reports app, you can prepare and generate greenhouse gas report files for emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, dinitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide equivalents. Based on the greenhouse gas report form, you can select the specific criteria that you need (plant, type of equipment) and generate the report file.

You can use this app to do the following:

• Specify report information, such as main location and reporting period.
• Specify reporting criteria, such as location type, location classifiers, or data classifiers.
• Specify report details, such as a unit of measure.
• Generate a report file.
• Download a report file.

Picture 1: Streamline how environmental reports can be managed.

Management of Reporting Tasks

With this feature, you can use reporting tasks to plan the creation and generation of environmental reports. Reporting tasks help trace the schedule of the report and maintain responsible persons to work on it. Reporting tasks allow aligning the report to specific compliance requirements. You can schedule single or recurring reporting tasks.

Once created, a reporting task initiates an environmental report on the task start date and sends it to an assignee to complete the work on the report. The report can be sent for approval once the file is generated by the system. The task is closed only after the report is finished and approved.

Picture 2: New reporting task type with an additional task definition app: automatic report creation based on the task data.

Key Features

You can use this app to do the following:

• Create reporting task definitions.
• Set recurrence for scheduling multiple instances of a reporting task.
• Assign a location to the reporting task definition.
• Add report information to the reporting task definition.
• Assign reporting tasks to an assignee or approver by the business user or location role.
• Add and edit objects that a reporting task refers to, such as compliance requirement paragraph and compliance scenario.
• Delete a reporting task definition and disable its scheduled future instances.

Managing data classifiers

With this new Manage Data Classifiers app, you can view all available data classifiers in the system, check where they are used, and make changes as needed to how data sets are classified. The app allows you to perform data classification, with a broad context in mind and supports you in handling the classification of bigger volumes of multiple data sets by mass-enabled functionalities for assignment and merging of data classifiers.

Picture 3: Gain a broader overview of the current set-up in the system their assignments and usage.

Key Features

Use a new SAP Fiori app for easier management of data classifiers through:

• Overview of all available data classifiers in the system
• View of all assigned data sets to a data classifier
• Current use of a data classifier within the current solution setup in location-aggregation activities and reports
• Mass assignment and unassignment functions
• Merge of data classifiers function to handle duplications

Management of waste transportation documents

A user with the role of Environmental Manager assigned to a specific waste generator can create and edit waste transportation documents in the My Waste Transportation Documents app. You manage the data for the corresponding forms associated with the waste transportation documents which are required to document each step in the disposal chain.

Now with this new 2022 release, you can create and manage the German waste-transport documents (Begleitschein) in the system

Key features

With this SAP Fiori app, you can create, search, and edit waste transportation documents of different waste generators. You can use various filters to search for specific waste transportation documents and update their data.

Only a user with the role of Environmental Manager (SAP_BR_EHS_ENV_MGMT) associated with a location, named waste generator in this app, can create and edit waste transportation documents.

Picture 4: Overview waste-transport documents at locations under individual responsibility.

 Waste Transportation Documents

To dispose of generated waste, an Environmental Manager needs to create a legally compliant waste transportation document. The generated corresponding forms are required to document each step in the waste disposal chain.

Prerequisites

To create a new waste transportation document, you need to have predefined a waste stream with a corresponding disposal channel in the My Waste Streams app.

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For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, and SAP S/4HANA, check out the following links: 

• SAP S/4HANA 2022 “highlights in seconds” blog and video
• SAP Enterprise Resource Planning website
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition release here
• SAP S/4HANA Community here
• The Link Collection for Sales here
• The Link Collection for Product Compliance here
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• Join the SAP S/4HANA Movement
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here