Calculating a CO2 footprint

Business challenge
Our client is a large industrial company, with six production sites around the world, and a desire to report its climate impact and CO2 emissions in a simple, clear and compelling manner. The client’s ambition was to primarily implement a pilot project, which would have the potential to be developed into a more permanent and comprehensive initiative within the company. The objective was to create an inventory of energy consumption and the emissions related to climate change, in order to communicate the results to stakeholders and initiate energy efficiency measures that benefit the climate and reduce financial costs for the company.

Our solution
Enact provided advice on the appropriate limits for the energy inventory and CO2 footprint. We developed tailor-made data collection forms to ensure that the correct information was gathered concerning energy use from the six different factories and developed internationally standardized models to convert energy use from various activities to CO2 equivalent emissions. Enact also helped to develop a process and calculation method for estimating emissions resulting from the company’s subcontracted transportation. Finally, we delivered a clear summary of the results that can be used both internally and externally.

Results
The result was an inventory of CO2 emissions according to the internationally standardized ‘Scope’ division: Scope 1-3. Scope 1 represents emissions resulting from the operations that the company either owns or has direct control over. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions that arise from purchased electricity and heat. Scope 3 represents all other emissions, including the emissions from subcontracted transportation, which our client decided to report.
The client now has an overview of their CO2 emissions and can relay the details to interested customers, which it did during the project.

The company is now ready to expand the measurement and reporting processes to Group-level. It is also to begin implementing strategies and activities to reduce their energy consumption, their impact on climate change and their financial costs.