Measure GHG emissions

Carbon footprint consultants

Carbon footprinting: GHG emissions

Are you struggling to tackle your organisation’s carbon footprint? Are you wondering:

Offering full carbon footprint services, Grain can help.

Our Carbon Footprinting work

Building in green space

Pegasus Group

Integrating sustainability into a leading planning and development consultancy

Four business people having a meeting with charts in background

Grain: carbon footprint consultants

Whether you’re looking to conduct your business’ first greenhouse gas inventory or building on a base year with more detailed data, we can offer our expertise.

What does a carbon footprint include?

Your company’s carbon footprint measures the outputs of actions (e.g. travel, investing, purchasing, manufacturing) and in turn, their impact on the planet. To meet Paris Agreement commitments, it is vital for all organisations to identify and be responsible for the emissions that your organisation releases into the atmosphere.

While the word carbon is often put in front of emissions, footprint and reductions, we are usually referring to a variety of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The most common GHGs are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and ozone (O3). Each gas has a different potency and warming impact. For example, methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas, but it dissipates faster.

CO₂e means carbon dioxide equivalent, a metric that considers all greenhouse gases and their different global warming impacts. This comparable figure is usually reported on an annual basis.

Chart of Kyoto gases with global warming potential
Table from Cooler Future

Scope 1, 2, and 3

According to the GHG Corporate Protocol, emissions are classified into Scope 1, 2, and 3 based on where they originate: 

  • Scope 1 emissions are the direct GHG emissions from a company’s business activities. These include the generation of electricity, heat and steam, the manufacturing of chemicals, waste processing, transportation using company-owned vehicles and fugitive emissions through equipment leaks.
  • Scope 2 emissions are the indirect emissions generated by the production of purchased energy. This includes purchased heating, electricity, steam, and cooling.
  • Scope 3 emissions are all the other indirect emissions occurring in a company’s value chain, including upstream and downstream activities that you do not own or control. For a business which is not directly burning fossil fuels or purchasing a great amount of electricity, Scope 3 emissions can account for over 90% of your footprint.
Illustration of greenhouse gas emissions showing scope 1, 2, and 3

Measure, analyse, reduce

The Grain team is here to help you measure a detailed carbon footprint, guiding you through a data collection process tailored to your specific industry and needs. We use an online data gathering platform aligned to the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, assuring that our emissions calculations can be trusted and communicated confidently.  

A figure of total tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (tCO₂e) will be calculated with a breakdown of sources and scopes. We provide data visualisations demonstrating the key areas of emissions from your business and where to focus reduction targets.

Having a full carbon footprint allows you to be transparent with your stakeholders including customers, suppliers, and employees, demonstrating that you are serious about positive change.

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