Measure your emissions across Scopes 1-3

What is this action about?

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

A corporate carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions emitted by private or corporate activities during a given period. Measuring your footprint across Scopes 1-3 is an essential component of any net zero journey and the first building block towards setting science-based targets and devising a climate strategy to move from goals to action.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol establishes comprehensive global standardised frameworks to measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions from private and public sector operations and value chains. Emissions are broken down into three categories:

• Scope 1: Direct emissions This includes all direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned or controlled by the reporting company. An example is emissions directly created by manufacturing goods with fossil fuels and direct emissions from fossil fuels used in owned company vehicles.

• Scope 2: Indirect emissions This includes emissions that result from the consumption of purchased or acquired energy, such as electricity, heating, cooling, and steam. They are called indirect emissions because the organisation doesn’t burn the fuels directly. Due to the organisation's consumption, they are made responsible for the equivalent amount of emissions that arise directly, for example, heat or steam purchased by the reporting company from utility providers.

• Scope 3: All other indirect emissions This includes emissions from sources that are not owned and not directly controlled by the reporting company. An example is emissions in the company's supply chain and emissions caused by vendors within the supply chain, outsourced activities, and from business travels, and employee commutes.

To help with the measurement process, our friends at Tech Zero developed a practical step-by-step resource. If you are interested in Scope 3 emissions specifically, the guide we developed together with some of our members might come in handy. Both resources can be downloaded below.