Blackmores ISO Consultancy Service: The creators of isology®

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) accounting has become increasingly important in recent years due to the demand for more environmental accountability.

Whether by choice or due to legislation or mandatory Government led schemes, organisations need to able to effectively calculate their current impact before they can the right steps to reduce and offset the remaining emissions.

There are a lot of different routes to take, and some may look so similar that you have to squint to see a difference.

In this episode, Mel Blackmore breaks down the similarities and differences between the leading GHG emission reporting frameworks, ISO 14064-1 and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.

You’ll learn

• What are the 2 leading GHG accounting frameworks?
• What are the similarities between the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064?
• What are the differences between the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064?
• Reporting on indirect emissions
• Choosing the right framework
• How can the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 complement each other?

Resources

• Carbonology

In this episode, we talk about:

[00:30] Join the isologyhub – To get access to a suite of ISO related tools, training and templates. Simply head on over to isologyhub.com to either sign-up or book a demo.

[02:30] Episode summary: Mel will look at the similarities and differences between the 2 leading GHG emissions reporting frameworks, the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1:2018.

[02:20] What are the 2 leading GHG accounting frameworks? – Greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting has become increasingly important for organisations seeking to manage their environmental impact and contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. Two prominent frameworks guide this process: ISO 14064-1:2018 and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.

Climate change concerns necessitate robust methodologies for quantifying and reporting organisational GHG emissions. Standardised frameworks offer a transparent and reliable approach for organisations to measure their impact and contribute to environmental sustainability goals. This article examines two leading frameworks: ISO 14064-1:2018 and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.

[06:10] What are the similarities between the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064? – GHG Scope Definition: Both frameworks categorise emissions into three scopes: Scope 1 (direct emissions from owned or controlled sources), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heat, or steam), and Scope 3 (other indirect emissions throughout the value chain).

In general, the GHG Emissions covered in the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard conform to ISO 14064-1 if significant Sope 3 GHG emissions and GHG removals are both considered.

Quantification Principles: Both emphasize the importance of accuracy, completeness, consistency, transparency, and relevance when quantifying emissions.

GHG Reporting Boundaries: Both require clear definition of the organisational boundaries for which emissions are quantified.

GHG Inventory: Both frameworks guide the development of a GHG inventory, a comprehensive record of all organisational emissions.

[09:15] What are the differences between the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064? – Focus: ISO 14064-1 is a more procedural framework, outlining the steps for quantifying, reporting, and verifying GHG emissions. The GHG Protocol, on the other hand, offers detailed guidance on calculating emissions for various activities and sectors but lacks formal verification requirements.

Level of Detail: The GHG Protocol provides a more comprehensive and detailed approach, including calculation methods, guidance on emission factors, and best practices. ISO 14064-1 offers a less prescriptive approach, allowing organisations to choose calculation methodologies based on their specific needs.

Avoided GHG Emissions: The concept of avoided GHG emissions is not addressed in ISO 14064-1.  However, the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard addresses the quantification of avoided emissions, which are required to be reported separately.

Verification: Verification by a third-party verifier is optional under the GHG Protocol but mandatory for organisations seeking public disclosure or certification under ISO 14064-1. Verification enhances the credibility and reliability of reported emissions data, this could be to schemes like EcoVadis.

Value Chain Emissions: While both frameworks acknowledge Scope 3 emissions, the GHG Protocol offers a dedicated standard – the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard – providing specific guidance on quantifying these emissions.

Addressing GHG Emissions and Removals: ISO 14064-1 clearly address GHG emissions and removals for each  category and removals are therefore an inherent part of the GHG quantification. The guidance in the GHG protocol is not as clear but allows for the reporting of removals separately from GHG Emissions.

[13:30] Join the isologyhub and get access to limitless ISO resources – From as little as £99 a month, you can have unlimited access to hundreds of online training courses and achieve certification for completion of courses along the way, which will take you from learner to practitioner to leader in no time. Simply head on over to the isologyhub to sign-up or book a demo.

[17:05] Reporting on indirect emissions:  The main challenge for organisations is the reporting of indirect emissions (Scope 3), often leading to confusion based on a lack of clarity and understanding of how granular the data needs to be, combined with challenges extracting data from third-parties. 

ISO 14064-1 is very clear regarding which Scope 3 emissions are to be included, whereas the GHG Protocol standard maybe viewed as more open to interpretation.

In contrast, GHG Protocol standards require the inclusion of Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased energy); the inclusion of other indirect GHG Emissions under scope 3 is optional.

The GHG Protocol standard is referred to in various GHG reporting and disclosure initiatives whose requirements for the reporting of the Scope 3 emissions vary.  Whereas ISO 14064-1 has been created and approved by representatives from 61 nations to determine a specification for Scope 3 emissions reporting.

[20:30] Choosing the right Framework: The choice between ISO 14064-1 and the GHG Protocol depends on an organisation’s specific needs and goals. Here are some considerations:

• Is there a need for Verification? i.e. is it a mandatory requirement
• What level of detail is required? If a detailed approach with extensive calculation guidance is preferred, the GHG Protocol might be more suitable.
• Resource availability – Do you have the resource to do this yourself or will you need a helping hand?
• Disclosure reporting requirements – check what you need to comply with as this could determine which framework you use.

[23:30] How can the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 complement each other? –  This podcast may have you thinking that it has to be one or the other, but in actuality the two frameworks can be used together effectively. Organisations can utilise the GHG Protocol’s detailed guidance to develop their GHG inventory and then follow ISO 14064-1’s process for verification and reporting.

If you would like some help with GHG reporting or Verification, please get in touch with Carbonology.

We’d love to hear your views and comments about the ISO Show, here’s how:

• Share the ISO Show on Twitter or Linkedin
• Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.

Subscribe to keep up-to-date with our latest episodes:

Stitcher | Spotify | YouTube |iTunes | Soundcloud | Mailing List

One of the first steps towards becoming more sustainable is knowing where you currently stand in terms of your emissions. Calculating this may seem like a mammoth task, especially if you have multiple sites or assets such as company vehicles to keep track of.

David Algar joins Mel today to discuss how to calculate your Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, starting from Establishing boundaries through to number crunching and quantification.

What is the first step when embarking on quantifying your GHG emissions?

• One of the first steps is getting leadership commitment – This allows for quicker decision making and the allocation of roles and responsibilities, which really helps with the data collection
• Once you have this leadership commitment, the next steps is to start establishing boundaries.

So how do you define your boundaries?

• There are 2 ways you define your boundaries as specified in ISO 14064-1:
• The first are your organisational boundaries, you’ll need to outline which facilities are included within the quantification. It is not as simple as just saying ‘everything’, you’ll need to specify which sites, buildings, factories etc
• You can define your organisational boundaries via the control approach, so what facilities do you have financial or operation control over? Or the equity share approach, where you account for your portion of emissions and removals from facilities
• The next step is defining your reporting boundaries. This refers to activities and specific sources of GHGs.
• Emission sources are split up into 3 categories; Scope 1 – direct emissions from combustion, or leaks, normally at sources you own , Scope 2 – indirect emissions from imported energy, and Scope 3 – all other indirect emissions, these will be from sources you don’t necessarily own or have much control over such as staff commuting, supply chains or emissions from the use of products you manufacture
• Depending on your organisation, Scope 3 will account for somewhere between 60-80% of your total emissions.

How would you recommend going about collecting to data?

• ISO 14064-1 wants you to have primary data, i.e. data you have collected yourself.
• Some of the most common sources of the information you’ll need to quantify your emissions include, utilities bills, expense claim, meter readings.  
• What some organisations are doing is sending out simple surveys to staff to gather information on commuting habits or the mix of home and office working.
• In the real world all the information you need isn’t going to be available, or at least it won’t be available in the way you would like.
• it’s important to have someone dedicated managing data collection as this may involve multiple sites or international locations.
• Ideally, you’d start setting a framework to use when going forward and to make sure you can collect the relevant data each year.

Selecting a base year

• If this is the first time you have quantified your emissions, it will automatically become your base year.
• This will be the year you compare future emissions against, and track reductions against, whether they are absolute, or intensity based, such as tonnes of CO2e per employee or product sold
• You may have to re-visit your base year calculations if new data or more accurate methods arise. A base year review may also be required if there has been a change in organisational boundaries due to a merger or acquisition.

The Number Crunching

• At the end of the process, we want to see our levels of emissions for each of the Kyoto gases, this will allow us to see emissions as tonnes of CO2 equivalent when each gases’ global warming potential has been taken into account.
• Some gases can have global warming potentials 200 times or 1,000 times or even over 20,000 times stronger than CO2 on its own, hence why even the smallest leak of can be important, say, from an air conditioning system.
• We calculate emission from specific sources by using conversion factors.
• In the UK we are very lucky to have emission conversion factors published publicly by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy every year going back to 2002
• Other countries release conversion factors too, so if you have sites round the world, you should be able to find factors that can be applied. This may involve converting some units though.
• The data isn’t always going to be available in the ideal format, so you’ll need to spend a bit of time on Google identifying rates for specific areas and years if you don’t have anything else to go on.
• Liaising with landlords and facilities management is always a good idea, not only to collect data, but to help with implementing initiatives that can reduce emissions in the future  

Estimates, Assumptions, Uncertainties and Transparency

• You’re going to have to make some assumptions as you go.
• In line with ISO 14064-1 you’ll need to be as accurate as possible even if this means someone going through individual lines of expenses to estimate flight distances based on ticket costs or coming up with a system to represent your supply chain.
• Another important aspect of ISO 14064-1 is transparency. The best way to manage this is to simply make all your calculations visible, this way they can be reviewed and sense-checked but others.
• For each emission source you’ll also need to assign it a level of uncertainty. For instance, expense claims are usually highly accurate as they show mileage from one location to another, and sometimes even record the specific vehicle, you could say this has an uncertainty of 2-5% for instance.
• At the other end of the scale calculating the emission from the life cycle of your products has a high degree of uncertainty as you don’t know how a customer will use it, how long it will last, how it will be disposed of or if it will even be used at all. This could have an uncertainty of 30-40% for instance
• A positive outcome of managing all these uncertainties is that you will have a framework going forward for calculating specific sources.

Managing your Emissions Going Forward – Applications of Quantification

• Ironically it is often the biggest emission sources that businesses have the smallest amount of control over, but there will usually be some action that can be taken to reduce them.
• Quantifying emissions is also one the first, and arguably the most essential steps towards achieving carbon neutrality, as you can’t get very far without knowing your emissions.
• PAS 2060 is the standard we use at Blackmores as part of our Carbonology service to help businesses achieve carbon neutrality, this is supported by quantifying emissions in line with the ISO 14064 methodologies we’ve mentioned In previous podcasts.
• Developing and implementing a carbon reduction plan to reduce emissions over subsequent reporting periods is another application of your GHG quantification and is an important part of working towards carbon neutrality.

Further resources:

Free Webinar – Targeting Carbon and Supporting Net Zero – hosted by Alcumus, David Algar will feature as a guest to help you understand your Carbon Footprint and provide a roadmap towards Carbon Neutrality. Register Here.

We also have more information about our Carbonology service available Here.

We’d love to hear your views and comments about the ISO Show, here’s how:

• Share the ISO Show on Twitter or Linkedin
• Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help, and we read each one.