21 november 2024

corporate carbon footprint

corporate carbon footprint

According to the GHG Protocol standard, the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions can be calculated for a company, product, service, event, municipality, city, country and individual. The following greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account for the calculation of the carbon footprint:

  • carbon dioxide
  • methane
  • nitrous oxide
  • sulfur hexafluoride
  • perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
  • hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
  • nitrogen trifluoride

In today's article I will focus on the steps you need to take to calculate your company's carbon footprint.

Corporate Carbon Footprint

According to the definition of a carbon footprint, it will be the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted by a company. But... when does a company begin and when does it end?

The definition of operational and organizational boundaries, which are very precisely explained on the GHG Protocol website, comes in handy. Determining boundaries involves identifying emissions that are to be included in the company's greenhouse gas inventory.

Below I present the mandatory elements in calculating the company's carbon footprint.

Part I Defining the boundaries

Reports, both carbon footprint and sustainability, should be characterised by materiality. This means that they should reflect information that is important to the external and internal recipients of the report. Material information is the amount of emissions for which a given company is responsible.

Therefore, an important aspect of materiality is the definition of organisational and operational boundaries.

Organisational boundaries can be divided into those related to equity participation and those related to control participation. Equity participation includes emissions proportional to the percentage of ownership of the organisation in a given undertaking or plant, while control participation includes gas emissions from operations over which it exercises control. There are two possibilities for exercising control: operational or financial.

The result of Part I of calculating the carbon footprint is the definition of the organisational boundary (to recognise the scope of this company's activities), and then operational boundaries are established, i.e. the identification of sources of direct or indirect emissions.

Part II Identification of gas emission sources

The next step is to identify, within operational and organisational boundaries, the processes that cause Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.

Scope 1 Direct greenhouse gas emissions

Direct greenhouse gas emissions come from sources that are owned or controlled by a company, e.g. emissions from its own boilers, furnaces or vehicles, refrigeration systems.

Scope 2 Indirect greenhouse gas emissions

Scope 2 covers greenhouse gas emissions from the production of purchased electricity or heat.

Scope 3 Direct greenhouse gas emissions

These are other indirect emissions that can be divided into the following 15 categories:
Upstream Emissions
- purchased goods and services
- capital goods
- energy and fuel emissions not included in scope 1 and 2
- upstream - transport and distribution
- waste generated by operations
- business travel
- upstream - leased assets

Downstream Emissions
- downstream - transport and distribution
- processing of sold products
- use of sold products
- handling of sold products at the end of their use
- downstream - leased assets
- franchises
- investments

Part III Collecting data and performing calculations

To perform calculations for individual ranges, it is necessary to multiply the consumption causing emissions by the emission factor and then present the results divided into the appropriate ranges.

Part IV Reduction Plans

The aim of carbon footprint calculations should be to establish production plans to strive to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

 

 

 

 

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