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2.4. GHG scopes

A guide to understanding the carbon footprint of your business.

Key Takeaways 2.4

In a nutshell

  • Understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) scopes and how you can start measuring your current business emissions.

  • Think about reporting these emissions but most importantly working out ways to reduce them.

Understanding your business carbon footprint

This can be complex, even for small businesses. But in this section we will try and simplify what needs to be done and introduce the recognised standards and terminology to help you navigate through it.

When getting to grips with your company’s carbon footprint, it is important to:

  • First consider how to measure (calculate) your current emissions.
  • Then start to report them on an annual basis (even if this is not mandatory for you at the moment, it is good to start a record of your annual emissions now).
  • Then create a plan to reduce your carbon emissions as much as possible.
     

GHG scopes

To understand a company’s carbon footprint, many organisations use the GHG (greenhouse gas) Protocol Corporate Standard. In fact, it is the world's most widely used set of GHG accounting standards, allowing businesses and governments to report their greenhouse gas emissions on an internationally recognised accounting platform.

The GHG (greenhouse gas) Protocol Corporate Standard classifies a company’s greenhouse gas emissions into three ‘scopes’:

  • Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources – for most, this basically means gas for heating/cooking, and fuel used in company owned vehicles.
  • Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy – e.g. purchased electricity.
  • Scope 3: All other indirect emissions that occur in the supply chain (sometimes called the value chain), including both upstream and downstream emissions. This is the most difficult one to get a handle on.

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Clarifying upstream and downstream

  • Upstream emissions are those that occur during the life cycle of a material or product up to the point of sale by the producer (including all the raw materials, transportation of those materials to assembly or manufacturing, and business travel).
  • Downstream emissions are those that occur during the life cycle of a material or product after its sale by the producer (including distribution and storage, use of the product and end of life).

Scope 1 + 2 are relatively straightforward to get data on and measure by using your utilities bills. There are many online carbon calculators such as the one at Carbon Trust.

Or you can use the UK government’s greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors.

Getting a grip on Scope 3

Scope 3 is tricky, and in most cases this makes up the vast majority of a company’s emissions – often 90% or more. So, to get started on Scope 3, you will need to start measuring and obtaining data on things such as:

  • Water usage.
  • Waste production.
  • Distribution emissions (product in and product out).
  • Packaging.
  • Employee commuting / business travel.
  • Supply chain (the big one) – contacting your main suppliers and asking questions about their commitments and, where possible, obtaining specific product carbon emissions data.

You then need to start thinking about how and where to report all of this data and, most importantly, how you are going to start reducing your emissions. You will find useful information on that in sections 2.7. - 2.12 which cover environmental stewardship.