carbon footprint – GHG Accounting

Climate Lens

GHG & Climate Lens Assessment

The Climate Lens Assessment is a guidance document for infrastructure projects required by several of the Infrastructure Canada Plan Programs to motivate proponents to consider the impacts of climate change in the design and implementation phases. Under the Climate Lens, GHG Accounting Services can help you to develop the GHG Mitigation Assessment enabling your project eligibility to the Infrastructure Canada Plan programs, such as the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) and the Smart Cities Challenge (SCC).

GHG Accounting team has the expertise to conduct the Climate Lens analysis for your infrastructure project. With training in greenhouse gas accounting standards required for the development of the Climate Lens assessment, GHG Accounting Services team helps you to identify and quantify the project-anticipated emissions, translating data into mitigation plans. Our approach supports you to fulfill Infrastructure Canada Plan Programs requirements, while enhancing the project efficiency and reducing costs.

Disclosure Simplified with SoFi Professional Solutions

Reduce Costs and Improve Sustainability Performance
Successful organizations adopt sustainable business practices and utilize comprehensive Disclosure & Sustainability Performance management tools.
Sustainability is becoming a strategic priority because it can help organizations reduce cost and risk and generate new revenue.

“You can only Manage what you Measure”
To fully leverage sustainability as an advantage in your organization, you need a comprehensive understanding of the opportunities and risks at any given point and time of your operations. In particular, you need the ability to look across your operations and supply chain to determine the use of energy, raw materials, water and natural resources as well as carbon emissions and waste in one comprehensive system.
SoFi is an award-winning enterprise sustainability platform with integrated disclosure management functionalities used by some of the largest companies in the world.

Comprehensive Sustainability Performance Management
SoFi was the first to be certified by both CDP and GRI for their
respective reporting frameworks. Manage, track, report,
analyze and forecast across all of your sustainability criteria in
one comprehensive system.

System Features:
* Comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Management
* Comprehensive Energy Management
* Water And Waste Management
* Green Purchasing Support
* Highly Accurate Performance Tracking
* Unlimited Number Of Meters & Energy Sources
* Discover Cost And Energy Savings Opportunities
* Track Green Building Key Performance Indicators
* Benchmark Your Energy Use Intensity (EUI)
* A Comprehensive and User Friendly API
* Electronic Data Upload
* Full Dashboard User Interface
* Ad Hoc Analytics With Visual Drill Downs
* Target Monitoring And Performance Forecasting
* User Friendly Drag And Drop Analytics
* Full Audit Trail Functionality
* Clear Workflow And Role Management
* Multi-lingual

The system provides the ability to report using multiple GHG calculation boundaries for different purposes.
Depending on the needs of a client, SoFi allows for the custom creation of reports and the ability to link tailored reporting boundaries for different purposes CDP, GRI, GRESB, ICLEI, Compact of Mayors, etc..
Manage both corporate and community inventories in one place: SoFi enables users to organize everything they need in a single online platform. This includes the ability to manage both corporate and community GHG inventories in one platform and the ability to align them for the more
effective and consistent implementation of GHG reduction strategies.

Comprehensive energy management functionalities:
Rather than using two separate tools to track and report GHG inventories, the SoFi system allows users to process both in one place. This facilitates comprehensive energy modeling as well as accurate GHG inventory racking.
Always be up to date on your emission factors. The system comes with the relevant emission and GWP factors for your jurisdiction. All system content is regularly updated and supported.

Contact Us Today!
GHG Accounting Services Ltd. would be delighted to work with you to make your GHG data collection a breeze. If you want to streamline your data management and significantly reduce the associated costs, contact us today and we can give you a demonstration of how easy high quality, comprehensive and auditable GHG Inventory tracking can become for you.
By phone: +1.866.273.8078

European Commission Launches Green Products Initiative

The European Commission is proposing EU-wide methods to measure the environmental performance of products and organisations, and encouraging Member States and the private sector to take them up.

Currently, companies wanting to highlight the environmental performance of their products face numerous obstacles including the need to choose between several methods promoted by governments and private initiatives. As a result, these companies may be forced to pay multiple costs for providing environmental information and consumers are faced with confusion resulting from excessive labelling that makes products difficult to compare.

For example, a company wishing to market its product as a green product in France, UK and Switzerland would need to apply different schemes in order to compete based on environmental performance in the different national markets. In France, it would need to carry out an environmental assessment in line with the French method (BP X30-323); in the UK, it would need to apply the PAS 2050 or the WRI GHG Protocol; and in Switzerland, it would need to apply the Swiss approach which is currently under development.

According to the latest Eurobarometer on Green Products, 48 % of European consumers are confused by the stream of environmental information they receive, which affects their readiness to make green purchases. A number of industrial groups have called for a pan-European approach built on EU-wide science-based assessments and Life Cycle Analysis. This is because of concerns that multiple initiatives at Member State level would run contrary to Single Market principles, confusing consumers and increasing costs for industry.

To address these problems, the European Commission has launched the Single Market for Green Products initiative, which proposes the following actions:

establishing two methods to measure environmental performance throughout the lifecycle – the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF);
recommending the use of these methods to Member States, companies, private organisations and the financial community through a Commission Recommendation;
announcing a three-year testing period to develop product- and sector-specific rules through a multi-stakeholder process;
providing principles for communicating environmental performance such as transparency, reliability, completeness, comparability and clarity; and
supporting international efforts towards more coordination in methodological development and data availability.

The three-year testing period will be launched soon. An open call for volunteers will be published by the Commission on the Product Environmental Footprint and the Organisation Environmental Footprint sites, inviting companies, industrial and stakeholder organisations in the EU and beyond to participate in the development of product-group specific and sector-specific rules. On these sites, some preliminary information is already available about the objectives and expected timing of the test. For more information, please see this link.

U.S. Consumers are taking into account companies’ actions on climate change when purchasing

According to a recent report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, since 2008, approximately 25% percent of U.S. consumers have either rewarded or punished companies for those companies’ actions related to climate change. The report, “Americans’ Actions to Limit Global Warming in September 2012” (available online), indicates that a significant portion of the consumer market continues to care about the position of companies on climate change. The report also concludes that individuals who have not used purchasing power to either reward or punish companies in the past year plan to increase personal acts of consumer activism in the next year.

The report indicates that in the 12 months leading up to the September 2012 survey, about one in three adults rewarded a company that took steps to reduce emissions. In addition to rewarding companies for taking actions to reduce climate change impacts, 24% of those surveyed in September 2012 indicated that they had at some point in the past year chosen not to purchase products by companies that oppose steps to reduce climate change.

When asked to contemplate future behavior, 52% of individuals surveyed expressed the intent to either reward or punish companies sometime in the next year for the companies’ action or inaction to reduce climate change. Since researchers from Yale and George Mason began collecting data four years ago, slightly more than half of Americans have consistently reported plans to use purchasing power to either reward or punish companies. In November 2008, consumers indicated the greatest willingness (58%) to either buy or not buy based on a company’s actions on climate change. In the economic recession of 2010, willingness to utilize purchasing power to support global warming action fell to 51%. Since then, consumer support for utilizing purchasing power has remained at just over half of the surveyed American adults.

The Yale and George Mason researchers also studied three other prongs of climate actions by citizens: (1) saving energy, (2) citizen behavior, and (3) communication behavior. Even though a majority of American adults report that they always or often set their thermostats below 68 degrees and take other actions like replacing traditional light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs, the researchers noted a decline in Americans’ belief that certain energy-saving actions can reduce climate change. Americans are less confident today than four years ago that their individual actions will reduce their contribution to climate change. While Americans may be less optimistic about their individual impact on global warming, the report’s authors observed that a growing number of Americans say they contacted a government official in the past year to support mitigation of climate change. In the next year, the report indicates that more Americans intend to urge government officials to take action on climate change.

Overall, the Yale and George Mason polling data indicate that Americans continue to be concerned about global warming and are willing to use political and consumer activism to push for action on global warming.

What are Greenhouse Gases?

Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases or GHGs. When sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface, it can either be reflected back into space or absorbed by Earth. Once absorbed, the planet releases some of the energy back into the atmosphere as heat (also called infrared radiation). GHGs like water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) absorb energy, which slow or prevent the loss of heat in to space. This process is commonly referred to as the “greenhouse effect”, whereby GHGs act like a blanket, making the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be.

Since the Industrial Revolution began around 1750, human activities have contributed substantially to climate change by adding CO2 and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. These GHG emissions have increased the greenhouse effect, leading to rises in the Earth’s surface temperatures. According to the National Research Council (Advancing the Science of Climate Change, 2010), atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by almost 40% since pre-industrial times, from approximately 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in the 18th century to 390 ppmv in 2010. The current CO2 level is higher than it has been in at least 800,000 years. The primary human activity affecting the amount and rate of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.

The main GHGs directly emitted by humans include CO2, CH4, nitrous oxide (N2O), and several others:

Carbon dioxide (CO2): CO2 is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle through animal and plant respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, causing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to rise.
Methane (CH4): Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from livestock and other agricultural practices and by the decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills.
Nitrous oxide (N2O): Nitrous oxide is emitted during agricultural and industrial activities, as well as during combustion of fossil fuels and solid waste.
Fluorinated gases or F-gases: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) are synthetic, powerful GHGs that are emitted from a variety of industrial processes. F-gases are often used in coolants, foaming agents, fire extinguishers, solvents, pesticides, and aerosol propellants. F-gases are also sometimes used as substitutes for stratospheric ozone-depleting substances. These gases are typically emitted in smaller quantities, but because of their potency, they are sometimes referred to as “High Global Warming Potential” gases. F-gases have a long atmospheric lifetime and some of these emissions will affect the climate for many decades or centuries.
Tropospheric ozone (O3): Tropospheric ozone has a short atmospheric lifetime, but it is a potent GHG. Chemical reactions create ozone from emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds from automobiles, power plants, and other industrial and commercial sources in the presence of sunlight. In addition to trapping heat, ozone is a pollutant that can cause respiratory health problems and damage crops and ecosystems.
Water vapor: This is the most abundant GHG and significant in terms of its contribution to the natural greenhouse effect, despite having a short atmospheric lifetime. While some human activities can influence local water vapor levels, the concentration of water vapor on a global scale is controlled by temperature which influences overall rates of evaporation and precipitation. As a result, the global concentration of water vapor is not substantially affected by direct human emissions.

The effect of GHGs on climate change depends on three main factors: (i) the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere; (ii) the length of time that GHGs stay in the atmosphere; and (iii) the impact of GHGs on global temperatures.

The concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million, parts per billion, and sometimes parts per trillion. One part per million is equivalent to one drop of water diluted into about 13 gallons of liquid.

With respect to the length of time that GHGs stay in the atmosphere, each GHG can remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time, ranging from a few years to thousands of years. All of these gases remain in the atmosphere long enough to become well mixed, meaning that the amount that is measured in the atmosphere is roughly the same all over the world, regardless of the source of the emissions.

In terms of the impact of GHGs on global temperatures, the two most important characteristics are how well the gas absorbs energy (preventing it from immediately escaping to space) and how long the gas stays in the atmosphere. Some GHGs have a stronger impact than others on global temperatures. For each GHG, a Global Warming Potential (GWP) has been calculated to reflect how long it remains in the atmosphere, on average, and how strongly it absorbs energy. The GWP for a gas is a measure of the total energy that a gas absorbs over a particular period of time (usually 100 years), compared to CO2. Gases with a higher GWP absorb more energy, per pound, than gases with a lower GWP, and thus contribute more to changes in global temperatures. For example, methane’s 100-year GWP is 21, which means that methane will cause 21 times as much warming as an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide over a 100-year time period.

Accurate reporting and monitoring of GHG emissions is fundamental to reducing greenhouse gases and taking meaningful action to combat climate change. After all, you cannot manage what you do not measure.

Copenhagen to become first Carbon Neutral Capital by 2025

On August 23, 2012 an overwhelming majority of the Copenhagen City Council adopted an ambitious climate plan for the city. The plan, entitled CPH 2025, builds on a 2009 climate plan in which the city set out to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent of 2005 levels by 2015 and to become carbon neutral by 2025, making it the first national capital to do so. Copenhagen already met the first target in 2011, four years ahead of schedule, despite the fact that the city’s population grew by ten percent over the same period.

CPH 2025 mirrors the climate plan set out by the Danish government to vastly reduce the country’s carbon footprint and end its reliance on fossil fuels for energy production by 2035. The city released approximately 1.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2011, a figure that would drop to 1.16 tons a year in 2025 if no new initiatives were introduced. Extensive retrofitting of buildings, reorganisation of the energy supply and changes in transport habits are some of many initiatives the City of Copenhagen will implement in order to achieve its carbon neutral goal. Some of the key targets include:

Energy consumption:

20% reduction of heat consumption.
20% reduction of commercial and 10% reduction of residential electricity consumption.
Installation of photovoltaic cells to generate 1% of 2025 Copenhagen’s electricity.

Energy production:

Carbon neutral district heating.
Electricity produced by wind and biomass will exceed the total energy consumption of Copenhagen.
Separation of commercial and residential plastic waste.
Bio-gasification of organic waste.

Transportation:

75% of overall trips in Copenhagen will be on foot, bike or public transport.
50% of school or work commuting trips will be by bike.
20% increase in public transport passengers.
Carbon neutral public transport.
20-30% of light vehicles will use renewable energy like biogas or hydrogen.
30-40% of heavy vehicles will use renewable energy.

City administration:

40% reduction of energy consumption in municipal buildings.
New municipal constructions till 2015 will meet the requirements of the 2015 classification.
New municipal constructions till 2020 will meet the requirements of the 2020 classification.
City of Copenhagen vehicles will run on electricity, hydrogen or bio-fuels
50% reduction of street lighting energy consumption.
60,000 square meters of solar panelling will be installed on municipal buildings.

CPH 2025 offers a holistic vision for the city that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by transitioning energy production away from coal and toward biomass, wind and solar energy, while also reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency in transport, housing, heating and industry. The plan will cost the city about 2.7 billion kroner before 2025, although additional private investments of between 20 and 25 billion kroner will be needed from the private sector in order for the city to meet its targets.

BC Announces New Funding for Public Sector Carbon Neutral Commitments

On April 5, 2011, Environment Minister Terry Lake announced a new $5 million capital program that will be available to school districts for energy-efficiency projects to lower their carbon emissions. The provincial government indicated that this funding reaffirms its commitment to being the first carbon-neutral government in North America.

Starting in 2012/13, the new K-12 energy-efficiency capital program will be available to boards of education through the Ministry of Education. The amount of available funding has been set to be equal to or greater than the total paid by school boards each year for purchases of carbon offsets from the Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT).

In addition to the new funding, the following program enhancements for all public sector organizations were announced:

SMARTTool administration costs will no longer be charged to public sector organizations, resulting in $850,000 of cost savings that will be absorbed by the PCT.
To ensure the PCT’s offset portfolio meets the needs of stakeholders, the PCT will create an advisory panel. The panel will play an ongoing role in reviewing the structure and diversity of the carbon offset portfolio and provide suggestions regarding future offset opportunities. The panel will include representatives from the private and public sectors that purchase offsets from PCT, as well as select carbon-industry experts.
To streamline the current system, a link will be established that will feed energy data directly into the SMARTTool to reduce administrative costs associated with measuring emissions.

Under BC’s Carbon Neutral Regulation of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, certain public sector organizations were required to be carbon neutral by 2010. In June 2011, it was announced that BC had become the first major jurisdiction in North America to achieve carbon neutral operations as of 2010. This means that BC’s public sector including schools, post-secondary institutions, government offices, Crown corporations and hospitals have all achieved net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

New GHG Standards for Corporate Value Chain and Product Life Cycle Released

On October 4, 2011, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched two new standards that will enable businesses to better measure, manage, and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) and Product Life Cycle Standards are aimed at saving money, reducing risks, and gaining a competitive advantage for companies. These new standards were created in response to businesses that want to better understand and measure their climate impacts beyond their own operations. By using these new standards, companies will be able to create better products and improve efficiency throughout the value chain.

Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard

The Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard is designed as a first tool that companies can use to assess their entire value chain impacts and to identify opportunities for them to make more sustainable decisions about their activities and the products they produce, buy and sell. In particular, the new standard provides a harmonized global methodology for businesses to measure corporate value chain and product GHG emissions, which will help drive strategic business decisions regarding GHG reductions. Total corporate emissions often come from Scope 3 sources (i.e. indirect emissions that occur in the value chain, including both upstream and downstream emissions), which means that many companies have been missing out on significant opportunities for improvement. Users of the new standard can no account for emissions from 15 categories of Scope 3 activities. The Scope 3 framework also supports strategies to partner with suppliers and customers to address climate impacts throughout the value chain. As a result, both large and small companies can look strategically at GHG emissions across their value chain and focus limited resources in order to yield the biggest impacts.

Product Life Cycle Standard

The Product Life Cycle Standard is a tool to help users understand the full life cycle emissions of a product and focus efforts on the greatest GHG reduction opportunities. The new standard covers raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, storage use and disposal, and is aimed at facilitating the improvement and design of new products. The results can create competitive advantage by enabling better product design, increasing efficiencies, reducing costs and minimizing risks. In addition, the new standard will help companies respond to customer demand for environmental information and make it easier to communicate the environmental aspects of products. Like the Corporate Value Chain Standard, the Product Life Cycle Standard represents a globally consistent approach to measure and manage GHG emissions.

The new standards are available in our link section.

Another Study links High GHG Emissions with Negative Impact on Company’s Value

A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame has found that high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can have a negative impact on a company’s value. According to the study – Voluntary Disclosures and the Firm-Value Effects of Carbon Emissions (April 2011) – a company’s value decreases on average by $202,000 for every additional thousand metric tons of emissions it produces.

Researchers used hand-collected carbon emissions data for 2006-2008 that Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 companies disclosed voluntarily to the Carbon Disclosure Project to examine two issues: (1) firm-level characteristics associated with the choice to disclose carbon emissions, and (2) relationship between carbon emission levels and firm value. With respect to the first issue, researchers found a higher likelihood of carbon emission disclosures by firms with superior environmental performance, conditional on firms taking environmentally proactive actions. However, researchers found no association between inferior environmental performance and the likelihood of disclosing carbon emissions, conditional on firms taking environmentally damaging actions. Furthermore, researchers found that companies are more likely to voluntarily disclose their carbon emissions as the proportion of industry peer firm disclosers increases. In connection with the second issue, the researchers found a negative association between carbon emission levels and firm value. From its sample of S&P 500 companies, the study found that a company’s value decreases on average by $202,000 for every additional thousand metric tons of GHG emissions it produces.

In the study, researchers also pointed out that according to the 2009 Goldman Sachs’ GS Sustain Report it is expected that the relationship between carbon emissions and global climate change will drive a redistribution of value from firms that do not control their carbon emissions successfully to firms that do.
The study may be accessed online