10 Steps to Becoming a Carbon Neutral Business

Page 11 STEP 03: CREATE YOUR BASELINE Create your baseline STEP 03 Prior to reducing any emissions, you need to know the baseline volume and the sources of the emissions – a process called greenhouse gas accounting. This can be quite a complex and time-consuming process that should not be underestimated. GHG accounting is the foundation for every other aspect of your carbon neutrality program, and it is therefore an absolutely crucial first step. Unless you are an expert on GHG accounting and have sufficient resources, consider collaborating with an external consultant to calculate your carbon footprint. Even if you can measure your emissions yourself, you will still need a third party to validate your carbon neutrality claim to make sure it stands external scrutiny. Ensuring your data collection process is fully auditable and being able to back up your carbon footprint calculations is critical to making third-party validation as smooth as possible. The usual way for calculating emissions is to multiply activity data by an emission factor. Examples of activity data include liters of gasoline consumed, kilograms of waste sent to recycling or megawatt hours of electricity used. Emission factors are estimates of the carbon emissions associated with one unit of that activity. Activity data Emission factor Emissions Driving in a medium petrol car 0.18 9 50 km How are carbon emissions calculated?