We are determined to go to the next conference in Bali to achieve a result.
An assessment of your company’s climate impacts needs to consider both the opportunities to profitably reduce emissions as well as the risks of not reducing them. These can vary substantially between different companies and sectors.
Knowing where and how your company generates greenhouse gases is the first step to reducing them. This has to be determined through the use of methods such as energy audits and environmental technology assessments. As the business adage goes: ‘what gets measured, gets done’. For small businesses, online calculators and internal assessments can help start the process. Larger organisations may need specialised advice and use of tools, such as the new ISO 14064 standard for greenhouse gas accounting and verification.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol of the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development provides an accounting tool for government and business managers to understand, quantify, manage and report greenhouse gas emissions. Its guidance notes five important factors for a company’s assessment:
- Relevance, ensuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory appropriately reflects the company’s amount of emissions and serves the decision making needs of users – both internal and external to the company.
- Completeness, accounting for and reporting all GHG emission sources and activities within the chosen inventory boundary, and justifying any specific exclusions.
- Consistency, using consistent methodologies to allow for meaningful comparisons of emissions over time.
- Transparency, addressing all relevant issues in a factual and coherent manner, based on a clear audit trail.
- Accuracy, achieving sufficient accuracy to enable users to make decisions with reasonable assurance as to the integrity of the reported information.
- Compiling and maintaining a comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions improves a company’s understanding of its emissions profile and any potential liability or exposure. Such risks are increasingly a management issue due to heightened scrutiny by the insurance industry and shareholders and increasing moves by political leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through regulations. Although the time frame is uncertain, like many of the impacts of climate change, there is little doubt that carbon will eventually be judged as an atmospheric pollutant and regulated accordingly.
In the context of future greenhouse gas regulations, significant GHG emissions in a company’s value chain may increase costs or reduce sales, even if the company itself is not directly subject to regulations. Thus investors may view significant indirect emissions upstream or downstream of a company’s operations as potential liabilities that need to be managed and reduced. A limited focus on direct emissions from a company’s own operations may miss major GHG risks and opportunities, while leading to a misinterpretation of the company’s actual GHG exposure. Knowing where and how your company generates greenhouse gases is the first step to reducing them. Significant GHG emissions in a company’s value chain may increase costs or reduce sales, even if the company itself is not directly subject to regulations.
Calculating the footprint
For a basic idea of the carbon footprint of a business, a number of online calculators can help. Estimating the carbon footprint of commercial buildings can be done via, for example, the Portfolio Manager, US Environmental Protection Agency’s online energy rating system for commercial buildings.
Webconferencing business Webex has an online calculator on its website.
Other calculators:
Puretrust (UK/EU specific)
Green Tags USA (North America specific)
Tom Delay, Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, discusses how supply chain investigation can help business reduce carbon emissions. 
