The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Corporate Standard is widely used to calculate the GHG emissions of companies in a comparable manner. Having emission values at hand is not only often required by B2B customers, it also offers the identification of improvement potential for the future – regarding costs as well as climate impact.

 Additionally, it is needed to track and reduce emissions related to company targets and connected reporting.

So, how does it work? The first step is to set organizational boundaries. Then, the operational ones have to be defined. This includes emission identification (direct and indirect emissions) as well as selection of accounting scope and reporting. GHG emissions can be categorized in three scopes: Scope 1 refers to direct emissions from the company, scope 2 relates to electricity consumption (indirect emissions) and scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions. Make sure, that double counting of emissions (e.g. reporting the same emissions in scope 1 and 3) is avoided as well as omitting relevant emission sources.

Eventually, after defining boundaries, obtaining data and conducting calculations, the greenhouse gas emissions have to be reported. The GHG protocol provides a clear structure, following the principles of relevant, complete, consistent, accurate and transparent information. A public report shall include the description of the company and inventory boundaries, information on emissions (e.g. emissions per greenhouse gas, scope and total emissions) and applicable optional information (e.g. information about emissions and performance as well as about offsets). Verification of your results through an objective assessment regarding the conformity to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard enhances the creditability.

Calculating emissions of your company, however, is not a one-time effort. The emissions will change over time, certain measurements might be implemented based on the results of the past years to reduce the company’s emissions and conducting calculations regularly supports to track your progress. Structural changes however, like new acquisitions, might impact your calculation assumptions and can lead to the need of recalculation of previous data in order to maintain comparability.

Besides the greenhouse gas emission calculation of the whole company, it is also possible to evaluate the carbon footprint of a single product, e.g. of an electric device, considering raw materials, manufacturing and distribution as well as use-phase and possibly its end-of-life stage.