The term Carbon Emissions Scopes may or may not be familiar to business owners, but for any business wishing to measure and report on its Carbon Emissions, it is essential to understand.
Here’s our quick guide to Emission Scopes:
The international convention on reporting business carbon emissions divides emissions into three categories, or Scopes.
Scope 1
These are emissions which occur directly from the business premises or activity. Examples include:
- The use of a fuel on-site (gas, oil, LPG, diesel for generators)
- Company owned vehicles
- Fugitive emissions*
Scope 2
These are emissions for which the company is responsible, but which occur away from the business premises. Electricity falls into this category – the emission occurs at the power station, but the business is responsible for a proportion of it. Unless of course you purchase electricity from a 100% renewables provider, then it will be zero.
Scope 3
This is where it gets complicated, as Scope 3 emissions are everything else, including the supply chain, investments, capital assets, staff commuting etc.
Specific examples include:
- Water and waste water disposal
- Solid waste
- Business travel
- Materials and components
- Onward transport of goods
Here is an example of an emissions analysis of a service based company we recently conducted:
In this case, the office used only electricity for heating, and the company doesn’t own any vehicles, so there are no Scope 1 emissions.
The detailed analysis of emissions sources looks like this:
This illustrates perfectly why, even for relatively benign office based business activities, Scope 3 analysis is vital in order to show the full carbon picture.
Ewan Bent, 2 NOv 22
*We’ll explain Fugitive Emissions in a later article.