Measure

Measurement of carbon dioxide emissions is essential for understanding where your emissions are arising and how your limited resources can be directed towards the most effective projects. This requires some way to not only produce the carbon footprint for your business, but to separate it into the contributions from different ways in which you use energy.

How should you begin?

The approach here is to make carbon dioxide reduction as simple as possible, while ensuring the results you obtain are consistent with the recommendations of DEFRA in their Greenhouse Gas Protocol (now being sponsored jointly by DEFRA and DECC). This requires not only dividing up emissions into categories useful in finding solutions, but using the same emissions factors (amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of energy consumed) as recommended in the national procedures.

In regard to emissions, the Scope 1, 2 and 3 categories identified by DEFRA/DECC are useful, and are defined here as:

Scope 1: These are direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by your business. These might, for example, be emissions from boilers, furnaces and vehicles under your direct control.

Scope 2: These are indirect GHG emissions that are the result of activities of your business, but occur at sources elsewhere. An example is GHG emissions from the generation of electricity from the national grid, which you consume but don't produce directly.

Scope 3: These are more indirect GHG emissions that occur because of the activities of your business, but where the emissions take place elsewhere in a supply chain. An example is the embodied GHG emissions of the goods you purchase.

All three Scopes are included in the emissions you are asked to estimate here. But if you want to focus on some emissions rather than others, you should consider primarily Scopes 1 and 2 because these are most directly under your control.

How can you calculate these emissions?

To assist you, we have produced an SME Carbon Footprint Toolkit, which you can Download Here. It is an EXCEL file, with easy to follow instructions. It will involve collecting together some past energy bills and information on your travel, and then entering them into the spreadsheets where indicated. The spreadsheet will calculate your carbon emissions for you and indicate where you might focus attention in finding strategies to reduce.

Keep in mind that you don't want only the footprint itself (e.g. 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year), but the contribution from different aspects of energy use in your business. These aspects usually include (and the Toolkit is designed to help you consider):

Space heating
Space cooling
Refrigeration
Lighting
Ventilation
Process heating and cooling
Office equipment
Transport

Once you have produced your carbon footprint, you are ready for Step 3, which is Manage your emissions.