Carbon accounting, or greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting is the process of quantifying the number of greenhouse gases, directly or indirectly from a business or company’s activities.
It is a method that a company can use to calculate and understand how many greenhouse gases they emit.
How does it work?
For a company or organisation to be able to undertake carbon accounting, you first need to make sure you have the appropriate data to be able to make the calculations.
It relies on two sets of data:
- Business activity data
- Emissions factors
Business data describes the activities performed by the company or organisation. This could either be:
- Spend data – how much money that was spent for a certain product or service.
- Activity data – in quantities, this can be varied, such as, litres of fuel, miles travelled, kilograms of materials bought.
Emissions factors are the second lot of data required to undertake your carbon calculations. Emissions factors specify the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with given area of business data.
The UK Government release UK emissions factors on an annual basis that are to be used by UK and international organisations to report on their greenhouse gas emissions. These can be accessed here.
The accuracy of your carbon accounting, will all depend on the data you have access to. Please read our blog on ‘Understanding your scope 3 emissions’ to understand the different calculation methodologies and their accuracy ranking. It is important to recognise the importance of having accurate data, for reliability and transparency. Combatting Carbon will be able to help any organisation get a handle on their data, understand their emissions, rank their data accuracy and give them a plan to close their data accuracy gap.
Why should your company do carbon accounting?
Carbon accounting is essential if you want to reduce your carbon footprint.
You are not able to manage what you cannot or have not measured. Carbon accounting and understanding your carbon emissions is the first step you need to take in reducing your emissions. It will carbon hotspot your activities giving you actionable insights into the areas your company needs to focus on to gain the biggest impact.
Meet your sustainability reporting requirements. Sustainability reporting is fast becoming mandated and a legal requirement. By undertaking carbon accounting, this can help you measure and meet any climate impact reporting requirements.
It will also help you earn a competitive advantage and minimise risk to your company or organisation.
We at Combatting Carbon have automated these processes for you, so you can spend less time in data management and more time taking action.
Get started on your carbon accounting today, and complete our contact us form and we will get back to you. Alternatively, email us on [email protected]