Why do it?
• Accurate Emissions Reporting
This may be necessary if there are statutory requirements requiring your business to record and report emissions
• Information for Carbon Management Strategy Out with statutory requirements, there may be a significant business benefit from adopting a greener image, receive financial savings or it
may be social responsibility that determines business direction and policy
Available Standards
- GHG Protocol
- – www.ghgprotocol.org
- ISO 14064 Climate Change Standard
– www.iso.org
Emerging Standards – Focusing on the Supply Chain
- Carbon Reduction Label
- – www.carbon-label.co.uk
- PAS 2050 – Embodied GHG Emissions
- Publicly Available Standard
- BSI, Carbon Trust, Defra (see these websites for updates)
- Currently in second review phase
Scopes improve transparency & prevent double counting of emissions for GHG programs
The GHG Protocol requires reporting of Scope 1 & Scope 2 as a minimum
Source: GHG Protocol – A Corporate Accounting & Reporting Standard, Revised Edition
Define the boundaries of your footprint
Collect the activity data
- Company owned vehicles
- Other business travel
- Commuter travel survey
- Gas, oil & electricity bills
- Air con unit & other refrigerant gas losses
- Weight of waste
Calculate emissions & total footprint
activity data x emission factor = emission quantity
Emission factors are the mass of GHG per unit of activity measured as:
- kgCO2e released per kWh of electricity used
- kgCO2e released per litre petrol consumed
- kgCO2e released per km travelled by train
- kgCO2e released per apple delivered to supermarket
www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/envrp/pdf/conversion-factors.pdf
UK Fuel Mix Fuel Disclosure Data
Energy Source | % |
Coal | 35.8 |
Natural Gas | 38.8 |
Nuclear | 18.6 |
Renewables | 4.7 |
Other | 2.1 |
Energy Source g/kWh
Coal 890 Natural Gas 370 Nuclear 0 Renewables 0 Other 580
www.berr.gov.uk/energy/policy-strategy/consumer-policy/fuel-mix/page21629.html
All Carbon Trust material is available for free download at:
www.carbontrust.co.uk
(requires registration)
• Example
- Electricity Bills Æ Annual use of 238,403 kWh from SSE
- Gas Bills Æ Annual use of 28,940 kWh
- Diesel Vehicles (4 cars) annual logs Æ 95,000 miles
- Petrol Vehicles (1 car) annual log Æ 10,000 miles
- Electricity: SSE emission factor is 489g CO2/kWh
- Electricity emissions = 238,403 kWh/yr * 489 gCO2/kWh = 116,579,067 gCO2 = 116.6 tCO2/yr
- Natural Gas: The CO2 emission factor for natural gas from DEFRA is 0.206kg CO2/kWh
- Gas emissions = 28,940 kWh/yr * 0.206 kgCO2/kWh = 5,962 kgCO2/yr = 6.0 tCO2/yr
- Diesel: The CO2 emission factor for diesel from DEFRA is 0.3197 kg CO2/mile
- Diesel emissions = 95,000 miles/yr * 0.3197 kgCO2/mile = 30,372 kgCO2/yr = 30.4 tCO2/yr
- Petrol: The CO2 emission factor for petrol from DEFRA is 0.3372 CO2/kWh
Petrol emissions = 10,000 miles/yr * 0.3372 kgCO2/mile = 3,372 kg CO2/yr = 3.4 tCO2/yr