CALCULATE CO2
EMISSIONS AND
TARGET REDUCTIONS
Many businesses want to understand the impact they are having on climate change. A carbon audit is a method of calculating a carbon footprint and an essential starting point. A carbon audit measures the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by a person, organisation, event or product.
It will help you understand what your key emission sources are, and what opportunities you have to reduce them. It will give you an initial benchmark against which to measure your progress, and provide the opportunity to develop a carbon reduction plan.
Our CARBON AUDIT
Process in Seven Steps
Blue Marble Education supports you through the process of completing a carbon audit, establishing your carbon footprint, targeting carbon reductions, implementing and measuring the impact of your plan. There are seven steps in this process:
carbon audit protocols
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is the standard that the majority of organisations follow. It provides detailed guidance on methods, and is available free of charge online. Another recognised standard is ISO 14064 from the International Organisation for Standardisation, or ISO, which develops and publishes international standards. ISO 14064 builds on many of the concepts introduced by the GHG Protocol. It is important to use a consistent method to ensure a accurate result, particularly if you’ll be relying on several people to help collect and interpret data.
appoint carbon audit partner
Carbon Audits are big business and there are lots of providers in the market place. Blue Marble Education works with you to appoint a Carbon Audit provider that works within the defined GHG protocols, is ethically managed and Headquartered in Europe. Ecologi provide entry level audits free of charge for some SMEs; Greenly offer great collection, analytics and measurement tools using a sliding scale of prices; 3 Acorn Audits – run by activist, TV host and journalist Donnachadh McCarthy offer a boutique audit process.
collect and analyse data
Your Carbon Audit partner will collect and analyse your emissions data using the methodologies set out in the GHG protocol. The accuracy of your audit relies on collating consumption, quantity or spend data for all of the emission sources within your established boundary. For gas and electricity, collect data in kilowatt hours (kWh) from meter readings or bills. You can record data for other fuels in a variety of units, such as litres, kWh or megajoules (MJ). For transport emissions, collect fuel consumption by fuel type where possible (from fuel cards etc). Where this is not available, you can estimate consumption based on the mileage of the vehicles and fuel economy assumptions. Your emissions are expressed in units of tCO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents).
Evaluate Scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3
Scope 1: Direct emissions that result from activities within your organisation’s control. This might include onsite fuel combustion, manufacturing and process emissions, refrigerant losses and company vehicles. Scope 2: Indirect emissions from any electricity, heat or steam you purchase and use. Although you’re not directly in control of the emissions, by using the energy you are indirectly responsible for the release of CO2. Scope 3: Any other indirect emissions from sources outside your direct control. Examples of Scope 3 emissions include purchased goods and services, use of sold goods, employee commuting and business travel, outsourced transportation, waste disposal and water consumption.
target and plan reductions
Our Carbon Audit partners will produce a detailed carbon footprint report identifying your organisations GHG emissions by business activity and scope. It will recommend year on year steps that you should take to reduce your CO2 in an organised and targeted way that enables you to forecast and measure reductions. Simply measuring your emissions is not enough in a world that needs urgent and ambitious climate action. To accelerate the move to a decarbonised future, and reach Net Zero, we all need to play our part – by committing to reduce emissions and remove greenhouse gases. Your carbon audit will help you identity
Training and Implementation
Once you’ve done all the ground work, assessed and evaluated your organisations emissions and developed a carbon reduction plan you’ll need to get employee buy in and robustly implement changes. Blue Marble provides a portfolio of digital courses, e-learning and live workshops through which we build awareness, train workplace sustainability champions and disseminate your plan and resulting carbon emission reductions. Our team of course authoring experts can produce learning content for your current LMS or you can access courseware through the Blue Marble Digital Learning Platform.
measure impact and start year two
Annual access to accurate, granular GHG emissions data is essential for organisations looking to identify where to focus emissions reduction efforts, develop a strategy and track the impact of emissions reduction initiatives year on year. Your carbon audit should be repeated in an annual carbon accounting process so that you can manage your journey to Net Zero over the mid term period.
Achieving Net Zero by 2050 is a big challenge and will need sustained year on year effort. Your plan should include an annual re-evaluation and measurement process. You could consider establishing an annual carbon accounting process to round alongside you financial reporting. Training your employees is also an important part of the process.
Per capita carbon dioxide (COâ‚‚) emissions in the United Kingdom stood at 5.2 metric tons per person in 2021
In 2021, UK SMEs contributed an estimated 160 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, representing 44% of the total UK non-household emissions.
transport is the largest emitting sector of GHG emissions, producing 24% of the UK's total emissions in 2020 (406 MtCO2e).
Guides and
Resources
The Carbon trust
The Carbon Trust is an expert partner for businesses, governments and organisations around the world – helping them decarbonise and accelerate to Net Zero. The produce a really great guide to Carbon Footprinting.
greenly
With Greenly’s Carbon Management platform you can measure, reduce, report and offset your carbon emissions for a cleaner future. Really good carbon accounting platform and detailed reporting.
ECOLOGI ZERO
Ecologi Zero makes net-zero viable for you and your business. It’s a simple, no-cost way to calculate and visualise your business’s carbon footprint that delivers vital, actionable information in near real-time.