Key Data Points for Carbon Footprinting

When companies begin measuring their carbon footprint as part of their decarbonisation strategy, it becomes clear that some data points will always be required. From energy consumption and transportation emissions to supply chain impacts, identifying and tracking these data points provides the foundation for meaningful carbon calculations. In this blog, we’ll explore the key data points every company needs to capture, and some tips for doing so effectively, in order to undertake comprehensive and accurate carbon footprints that will ultimately help companies meet their net zero targets.

Key Data Points for All Companies:

All companies, regardless of size, will need to gather data on the following categories:

• Utility data
  • All companies will be required to provide utility data that often makes up their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. This includes electricity consumption, fuel consumption, water consumption and waste generation.
  • For electricity, fuel and water consumption, invoices are typically the source of these data points. Companies should ensure invoices are processed into a company's system on a regular basis in line with the billing frequency of utility data.
  • For waste specifically, companies can obtain actual carbon data from waste contractors as there are a number of suppliers who offer this service e.g. “Reconomy”. On a monthly basis, companies should ask for the CO2e of all waste disposal across offices by waste stream.

• Purchased Goods & Services - Services and Capital Goods
  • At a minimum, companies should have finance systems in place that enable all OPEX and CAPEX spend data to be extracted in terms of category of spend e.g. legal fees, marketing. In most cases, this data is available but it often takes some fiddling in order to extract the data in the simplest format.
  • For companies looking to improve the accuracy of this data, they should commence collection of supplier-specific data. For all purchased goods/services, engage with suppliers to request the carbon footprint of the products/services they directly provide. Not all suppliers will have this information to start with, but it will be important to signal demand and the need for more specific information. This can be commenced with the top 10 suppliers (by spend and emissions).
    • An interim approach can be to investigate whether the top suppliers report on their overall carbon emissions. If they do, using the amount spent with them as a ratio, a proportion of their reported emissions can be associated with your products/services.

Key Data Points for All Companies with Employees:

All companies with employees will need to gather data on the following categories:

• Commuting and Working from Home
  • Employee surveys, exploring employee commuting and working from home habits, should be conducted on a regular basis, especially as more offices are added to the portfolio and as policy changes develop.
    • Typical questions that should be part of a survey include, the number of days employees commute vs. work from home, the distance and type of transport they use when commuting, and details about their energy tariffs (e.g. 100% renewable) when they work from home.
  • Employees should be incentivised to complete the surveys in order to improve the response rate and increase the accuracy of emissions calculations.
  • Whilst this is not a data point that often represents the largest carbon hotspot, it is a great way to engage employees and show them on a more granular level that your company is considering its carbon footprint.

• Business Travel
  • It is recommended that companies work with a travel management company to log all business travel (rail, accommodation and flights) and reduce the burden on internal teams looking through expenses.
    • Select a travel management company that can provide CO2e data directly e.g. ArrangeMy, Concur
    • If actual CO2e data is not available from the system, then a distance-based methodology should be applied. This means ensuring the system contains total distance travelled (whether one-way or a return journey), total number of passengers travelling, class of travel, and mode of transport.  
  • Some data e.g. taxi travel may still need to be collected on the expense system using spend-based data. Consider setting up a business taxi account with a provider who can log all trips and distances, some taxi companies offer this service e.g. Uber, GreenTomatoCars, Addison Lee
  • For all other business travel e.g. private cars, the mileage should be logged on the system and company policy should specify the time-frames for uploading this information so data is accurately in the system as close to the time of usage as possible.

Key Data Points for All Companies that Make and/or Sell Products:

All companies that make and/or sell products will need to gather data on the following categories:

• Purchased Goods and Services - Goods
  • For product-related emissions, lifecycle assessments (LCAs) should be undertaken in order to understand the true lifecycle impacts of key products. This then enables carbon footprinting to be much simpler (and more accurate), by using the LCA results and applying them to the total number of products purchased/sold.
  • If LCAs are not available, then companies need to breakdown each product into the different component parts, identifying the type of materials being used and the quantity (weight) of each material type. These weights can then be scaled up based on the number of products purchased and sold.

• Manufacturing Energy Use
  • For companies that outsource their manufacturing, it's important to regularly engage with suppliers and encourage them to provide information on the resources they are using when making your products. For example, electricity consumption, fuel consumption, water consumption and waste generation. For all manufacturers, it is vital that you clarify the percentage of total consumption that is associated with your business and products.

• Upstream and Downstream Transportation and Distribution
  • Accurate data on how goods are distributed to and from your warehouses are notoriously difficult to collect. This process can become much easier if actual data is obtained from freight contractors by asking the following from your couriers:
    • CO2e emissions associated with all your shipments (a large majority of freight suppliers, such as DHL, can now provide this information).
    • If CO2e is not available, ask suppliers for the type of fuel and total fuel burnt across all shipments (in litres).
    • If fuel burnt is not available, ask suppliers for the type of truck utilised, fuel type (where known), distance travelled by each shipment and the weight (kg or tonnes) of each shipment.
    • All data should be collected per market, supplier and route so hotspots can be identified.

• Use of Sold Products
  • For products that involve additional resources to be used (e.g. electricity, water, fuel), specific information is required per product in order to calculate the lifetime emissions of products.
    • Work with the product team to explore the lifetime of products based on the materials used to build them and/or product testing results.
    • Undertake customer surveys to understand the typical use of products in different regions (e.g. number of hours the product is used per month).
  • The use of websites also form part of the data required for this category. The following data should be captured: a log of the different websites used for your company (including websites used in different regions) as well as the number of visits per website per month.

• End of Life
  • Undertake a detailed customer survey to understand what typically happens at the end-of-life of products in different regions - just because your products are made from recyclable materials doesn't mean they end up being recycled! Without data to back-up the assumption that products are being recycled, worse-case scenarios will have to take place in the carbon footprint assessment, which means more of your products being modelled as ending up in landfill.
  • If you have a returns scheme in place to improve circularity, make sure you are collecting data regularly on the number of returned items and quantity (weight) of materials being returned.

By tracking and managing these key data points on a regular basis, sourcing the data for a carbon footprint will become second nature for companies, making it a much less time-intensive task and something that can more easily be replicated each year when assessing progress towards net zero targets. By having good data in place, consultants undertaking these footprints can put more focus on understanding the results and modelling how different business practices may impact carbon emissions, rather than questioning the source and validity of data - a win-win for everyone!

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