To build an impactful sustainability strategy, organisations must first gain a clear understanding of their current emissions, the activities that generate them, and how they could go about tackling these emissions. This means calculating your carbon footprint.
Carbon footprinting must cover Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, giving a holistic overview of the climate outcomes associated with your organisation, product or service, and supply chain. Once you understand these figures, your organisation has a baseline from which it can implement strong, meaningful carbon reduction strategies. This is what makes carbon footprinting such an essential practice!
Navigating the field of emissions data can be daunting, overwhelming, and sometimes complex, but the benefits of grasping this data are significant.. Here, we detail seven reasons why your organisation should measure its carbon footprint, with tips and tricks to support your journey offered by our team of expert Sustainability, Carbon, and Net Zero Consultants.
We’ve developed a handy tool to help you calculate your footprint - CTA CF Tool
Organisations waste money and emissions by managing their energy inefficiently. Calculating your carbon footprint will allow you to identify problematic areas within your energy data. By having a holistic overview of how you are using energy, you can compare different activities and practices to better understand where your emissions come from and where you are best positioned to make changes – which will ultimately save your organisation money.
Consultant Tip: Katie Pepper
Start by calculating the carbon emissions of the basic equipment your organisation uses every day, such as lighting, heaters, kitchen equipment and the like. For example, what light fittings do you have and how often are they used throughout the day. You could save a significant amount of carbon by replacing filament bulbs that are on from 9am-5pm with LEDs.
Developing a sustainability strategy that accurately informs on net zero measures will only be successful if an organisation has identified their carbon-intensive activities, both in-house and across their value chain, by calculating their carbon footprint.
Environmental policies and strategies need to be backed by provable data and statistics. Organisations who have accurately recorded their carbon footprint are in a better position to roll-out strong policies with measurable and achievable targets.
Consultant Tip: Alasdair Dalzel-Job
Start by outlining targets that are relevant to your organisation and its goals. Carbon footprinting can help you identify where the bulk of your organisation’s activities lie, giving good steer as to where your strategies will be most impactful.
Carbon footprinting is also a good tool for developing accurate, science-based targets which are generally considered more impactful, with provable outcomes if achieved. Strong science-based targets will send a clear sustainability signal to investors and enhance your organisation’s reputation.
EU countries, and any country with securities listed on an EU regulated market, will need to align with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). In addition to this, the UK Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) policy, implemented 1 April 2019, covers regulation as to how UK businesses must publicly report on their carbon emissions and energy use. Understanding carbon footprinting best practice heightens your organisation’s ability to align with these standards.
Consultant tip: Jacqui Musson
The Green Economy team have been keeping businesses in the know on environmental business news for more than a decade, by collating the latest industry trends, regulatory changes and information on new funding and support programmes to help you on your sustainability journey.
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Your staff are contributors to your organisation’s carbon footprint. Making them aware of the carbon impacts associated with their daily activities will help your organisation understand and manage its footprint. By engaging staff with the footprinting process, they will be able to see their own contributions and develop ideas as to how they can mitigate this.
What’s more, individuals are interested in working for climate-aware organisations with a strong sustainability stance. Research has shown that one in five want green training at work, and further studies demonstrate that board members are better positioned to roll out impactful sustainability strategy when their staff are engaged.
Consultant Tip: Olivia Downham
Use staff engagement schemes designed to reduce each person’s footprint, such as cycle to work schemes . Also consider friendly competition ideas, like step and distance counting to encourage active travel. The competitive element is a good way to get people involved.
At Green Economy we’re proud to offer Carbon Literacy for staff engagement training which is designed specifically to help you engage your teams to accelerate action on decarbonising your organisation.
Find out more about Carbon Literacy for staff engagement training.
Having carbon data is only effective if your organisation has made the effort to properly understand and track it. Simple, rushed data isn’t enough, it needs to be high quality and well-informed. Studies have shown that 58 per cent of organisations will not feel in control of their energy use, and therefore carbon data, unless they have access to high quality data. Clued-up sustainability leaders are in a far better position to make impactful decarbonisation decisions.
Consultant Tip: Trina Watson
Not all data is created equal, but the important thing is to get started. High quality data is specific to your suppliers, whereas more generic estimates won’t tell you as much. Getting hold of supplier specific data depends on the strength of the relationship with your supply chain; this can take time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start building an understanding. You can start off with proxies that will still indicate where your highest areas of emissions are. On our Journey to Net Zero training programme, we support learners to understand what data you have access to, and to help make a plan to improve data quality over time.
Green Economy has launched a brand new tool that will help organisations get to grips with and start to improve their carbon footprint. Built upon our decades of experience working with organisations on their sustainability journeys, our tool is simple, highly accurate and best of all free to use.
Once you’ve inputted key data you can start to analyse your energy and waste and understand how you are using fuel, electricity, heat, steam and other resources. Our tool breaks down your emissions by scope 1, 2 and 3 categories, giving an estimate of your emissions across all three, and is flexible so you can look at specific time periods or categories. This enables you to analyse specific inventory items, to conduct spend-based assessments and have accurate, precise breakdowns of your footprint..
Get started using the tool here.
Need additional support? Join our workshop to help you get started with the tool.
Read our series of blogs to help you reduce energy in your business.
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