Carbon Footprint Calculation for Business
How do we calculate Carbon emissions and produce a Footprint?
Understanding your emissions is the first step to meaningful climate action. Changing Footprint provides businesses with a carbon footprint calculation using verified methodologies to measure Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Our reports give you the clarity and data needed to plan reductions, meet compliance standards and communicate your impact confidently.
A relatively simple Carbon Footprint can be created that will show the emissions generated by your organisation in terms of its operations, group structure, operations location and comparison metric (e.g. kg CO2 per m2). This Footprint can be referenced in a Directors Report or Sustainability Report to comply with UK legislation, i.e. Streamlined Energy and Carbon Report (SECR). This approach gives a useful starting point to understand which parts of your operation generate the most emissions.
In order to identify what could drive the largest and most cost effective change to reduce overall Carbon emissions, it’s necessary to expand upon a simple operations focus and include relevant parts of the supply chain.
Our Carbon Footprint Services
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR)
Scoping and identifying boundaries, data collection and Carbon emissions calculations, QA and report integration.
Scope 3 Carbon Emissions
Identify and calculate the relevant Scope 3 categories (there are 15) of upstream and downstream supply chain Carbon emissions.
Carbon Footprint category definitions
A full Carbon Footprint is divided into 3 categories which are dealt with differently. It is designed so that all emissions are accounted for and there is no duplication of emissions reported by the company. These are:
- Direct Carbon emissions (Scope 1) caused by activities such as burning natural gas to generate heat, and;
- Indirect Carbon emissions (Scope 2 and 3) are where the emissions are outside the control of the company and are separated into emissions related to:
- the generation of energy known as Scope 2 (electricity, heat etc) and
- those emitted within the supply chain (Scope 3). There are 15 sub-categories of Scope 3 emissions as defined by the GHG Protocol, which take account of items purchased (upstream emissions) and those sold (downstream emissions).
So, how do we calculate a Carbon footprint?
1. Understand the reasons for undertaking a Carbon Footprint
The drivers and goals could be to understand the risks and opportunities, identify Carbon hot spots, engage suppliers and employees, improve corporate reputation or comply with stakeholder expectations.
2. Review the boundary of the Footprint
There are emissions accounting principles that need to be followed which normally align with the companies financial accounting principles, i.e. how company activities are controlled (financial or operational) or the company has a share of equity in something.
3. Review the Scope 3 sub-categories and identify which to include.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions will always be included in a Carbon Footprint. Scope 3 categories should also be considered for a full understanding of an organisation’s impact.
The principles of footprinting are relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency and accuracy, therefore a realistic approach needs to be taken when producing a footprint. Some information is time consuming and costly to produce, that has only marginal benefit. This type of information should be acknowledged and included at an appropriate future point.
4. Organise the data into an inventory.
We will structure the data and reporting in a way that it is able to be repeated (as it’s likely that an annual update will be performed and could be reviewed and validated by a third party).
5. Create a Carbon report that aligns to the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064.
Sections of the Carbon report will be used in other Sustainability reports and disclosures (these requirements should be reviewed at the beginning of the process).
for more information or support on Carbon Footprinting or SECR, we’d be delighted to hear from you 😊.