Carbon footprint benchmarking

From Open Sustainability

For companies and individuals to better understand and manage their climate change impacts a 'carbon footprint' concept has been developed. People first need to see the extent of their impacts and where the hotspots are to most cost effectively reduce these. Determining a carbon footprint is not a once off task but needs to be completed on an ongoing basis to monitor reductions or increases in the organizations greenhouse gas emissions.

To gain an understanding of the relative size of a carbon footprint means to a organizations operation requires a benchmarking exercise. It is hard to comprehend whether a footprint of 100 million tons of CO2 is large or small for an organization, but if compared to a peer we can start to see the relative difference. Also a number of organizations are setting targets for reductions of emissions, it is hard to determine if the target is a stretching one or just the low hanging fruit. Benchmarking carbon emission targets and actual reductions is good for accountability.

Carbon emission aggregators

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent not-for-profit organisation which holds the largest database of corporate climate change information in the world. The data is obtained from responses to CDP’s annual Information Requests, issued on behalf of institutional investors, purchasing organisations and government bodies. The majority of companies submissions to the CDP are publically available. The CDP also includes a Leadership Index which shows the companies with the highest scores.

AMEE is a software as a service that captures activity-based energy and emissions data and provides an emissions calculation engine to analyze the data. The footprints are calculated using government or industry standards.

CO2Benchmark aggregates all carbon footprint data of organizations in the world and offers ways to analyze the data through their website. Some of the simple bencmarking services are offered for free, but others require paid access.

Sustainability and Carbon emission comparison

North America

Utilizing the Sustainability Benchmarking results open-sustainability compared the top 10 companies and their carbon footprints. The three rating indices chosen to compare the companies were the Climate Counts consumer based scorecard, The Corporate Governance and Climate Change Consumer and Technology Companies guide by CERES and the CDP's Climate Leadership Index.

When it comes to choosing the best of the best, Dell stands out as a leader in the non-carbon intensive sectors, with Baxter taking the lead for the carbon-intensive sector. Judging the best on absolute emissions is difficult, as the amount of emissions is generally dictated by your business, ie an energy company is always going to have higher emissions then a financial company. Companies at this stage in carbon reporting are being judged primarily on their level of disclosure and commitment to reduce emissions. For some companies their emission level is dictated by the fuel mix of the country they operate in and it may be hard for them to directly increase renewable generation.

United Kingdom

Utilizing the Sustainability Benchmarking results open-sustainability compared the top 10 companies and their carbon footprints. The three rating indices chosen to compare the companies were the UK Sunday Times Best Green Companies, the Climate Counts consumer based scorecard and the CDP's Climate Leadership Index.

It was a difficult choice to evaluate who was a clear leader in the carbon intensive and non-carbon intensive sectors. In the non-carbon intensive sector Barclays was rated higher in the CDLI and had a good level of disclosure but BT was the winner.  With their higher emissions they had a better relative emission intenstity rate. Which shows that for their emissions they are the most productive. BT have also set an ambitious goal to reduce their emissions intensity by 80% by 2020. it was even harder in the carbon intensive sector to determine a clear leader. For the UK there wa a large representation from mining companies in the carbon intensive sector, who have a large carbon footprint, but a good level of disclosure and committment. All three had set a target reduction in carbon intensity as opposed to absolute reductions. The highest scoring company in the CDLI was BHP Billiton, so have gone with them as the leader. 

Glossary and Methodology

Absolute reduction The other reductions relate to a reduction in the total CO2 emitted. Where a number is not listed but a commitment is stated within their reports to reduce emissions this has been recorded.

Carbon-neutral When emissions are reduced to zero and/or CO2 offsets are purchased for any remaining amount.

Ceres The 2008 report rates the companies out of 100 on climate change governance, performance and reporting. The higher the rating the better the company performed.

CDLI Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index. This is a rating of the best reporting companies within the CDP, in regards to depth of disclosure and commit to reduce emissions. The higher the rating the better the company performed, a cut off of 85/100 is used. A full listing of the 2008 companies and methodology for scoring can be found within the summary report. Unilever and Reed Elsevier reported on their company websites their scores within the CDP.

Climate Counts Also scores the companies out of 100 for measuring their footprint, reducing it, supporting climate change legislation and public disclosure of their actions. Site accessed August 2009.

Intensity Disclosed Scope 1 and 2 emissions totals divided by disclosed annual revenue.

Intensity reduction This relates to a percentage reduction in CO2 per unit of production or revenue.

Scopes 1, 2 and 3 units in thousand metric tons of CO2-e. Emissions been rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. Boundries for emission groups can be found witin the GHG protocol.

References