Count what counts!

The world of carbon is intimidating. It can be highly technical. It is filled with standards that are evolving. As a result, it is easy to “chase paper clips” rather than taking a real stride forward to reduce your carbon footprint and reduce your long-term carbon risk.

How can you tell where you have the most carbon risk? Where do you get the data? How do you model it? How do you identify your “hot spots”?

Footprinting is not a one-time thing. Footprinting is an ongoing discipline just like cost and quality control. The initial structure of a comprehensive carbon footprint will require some initial investment. Over time, the structure of your footprint will evolve. Your data will get better. And the impact of your reduction efforts will begin to take hold.

How do you set boundaries and scope?

It is crucial to see the big picture. Correct footprint assessments draw wide boundaries to include offsite emissions from organizations, and ‘cradle to grave’ emissions for products. International standards such as ISO 14064-1 and the GHG Protocol provide some guidance on setting boundaries.

An excellent rule of thumb is: if something hits your financial statements (i.e. you pay for it), then you need to consider its carbon risks. So start with your operating budget and 10-year plan.

Are you responsible for supplier emissions?

Yes. If you paid for it, it is likely that you own the carbon emissions. If your supplier doesn't reduce their emissions, then they will pay a high price for the carbon they emit and they will attempt to pass this cost increase along to their customers.

Where do you get your data?

It is easy to “chase paper clips”. Use your financial statements to identify your big consumption areas. Then go back to source documents to identify the actual amount of consumption.

Do you need to be a modelling expert?

While it is tempting, we do not recommend using spreadsheets. The long-term negatives of spreadsheets far outweigh the initial benefits that most people have them and most people know how to use them. Spreadsheets aren't well suited to complex, multi-dimensional problems, especially in a distributed, team-based setting.

How do you model your footprint?

We recommend that you develop your carbon footprint along the same lines as your organizational structure. This will help in collecting data, communications and building teams. While a tree-like structure will be a good place to start, you will want to visualize your carbon footprint and risk from many different angles and depths.

Why should you use standard emissions factors?

Using standard emissions factors has several benefits. It not only saves you significant time in not having to research and develop models that link emissions to consumption, it harmonizes efforts across an organization so that everyone is using the same factors and footprints are comparable and additive. Lack of harmonization can easily lead to spending most of your project time in meetings just trying to “get everyone on the same page” and figuring out how to deal with results based on different base assumptions.

Large organizations with sophisticated and/or specialized processes may need to develop “custom” emissions factors based on studies of their own production processes. We recommend only developing custom emissions factors when your footprinting efforts are at an advanced stage.

Why is a baseline footprint important?

Footprinting is an iterative process. Developing an initial complete baseline footprint (also called a reference footprint), helps in several ways. It will help you identify your “hot spots ”, where you will want to spend the majority of your early efforts. You can track your overall progress against the baseline, or use it as a starting point for modeling potential reduction scenarios.

How important is it to track our footprint?

As important as it is to develop a baseline footprint, it is critical to track your footprint over time. This will help you to understand the impact of changes in your data quality, the impact of reduction efforts, and the implications of rising carbon market prices and energy costs. When comparing footprints from different periods it is critical to do a variance analysis to make sure that changes in assumptions and emissions factors are not confused with changes in consumption or reductions.

How do you analyse your carbon footprint?

You should normalise your footprint by factors like number of employees, plant unit production, and revenue. Normalised footprints can be used to compare similar operations within an organization or the same operation from two different time periods.

It is also very helpful to compare your normalised footprint with other internal and external benchmarks if they are available.

How long will footprinting take?

The time it takes you to develop a comprehensive structure for your overall footprint and a baseline will depend entirely on the size, complexity and carbon intensity of your organization. An initial carbon footprint project could take several hours or many months.

We recommend starting small and acting boldly. It may be just as helpful to your long-term success to tackle a symbolic issue early rather than focusing all your efforts on identifying and reducing substantive sources of carbon emissions and risk. Get started now!