There are a lot of expectations and opportunities on Supply Chains for 2022, from various perspectives.
Resiliency
The past years have reminded us how crucial it can be for companies to better know their suppliers, and not only their Tier1: concentration of critical supply in a handful of regions, exposure to availability of resources and to fluctuation of energy prices, to name a few. A growing trend in the supply chain industry is to transition from just-in-time to just-in-case to minimize future disruptions.
Renewable Energy
Whereas a record 290 GW of renewables have been deployed in 2021, according to the IEA, their supplying has been partially slowed down during the same year due to a mix of supply chain disruptions, tariff increase, resource scarcity, high energy prices and concentration of producers in a small number of countries.
GHG emissions reduction
Scope 3 upstream emissions (i.e., emission from a corporation’s suppliers) are not alike matryoshka dolls. As companies take a closer look on their suppliers’ emissions and urge them to reduce it, they face themselves similar pressure from their own BtoB clients.
Circular Economy
In a context of increasing tension on some raw materials, reducing the resource input and the waste output can provide simultaneous benefits on business’ overall costs, resiliency and attractiveness to more climate-aware consumers
Environmental progress
The article quotes studies stating that a third of companies in both the US and the UK cited supply chain disruptions as a reason for their recent inaction on environmental progress. There seems to be still a long way to go before environmental progress stops being stuck as a nice-to-have-if-there-is-money-left item at the bottom of most companies’ to-do list.
