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Henk Harmsen

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September 2010 (12)
 

Magic disappearance trick of UNFCCC's emissions

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The Secretariat of UNFCCC published a carbon footprint of its activities in 2006, covering 2004 and 2005. That footprint contained multiple material errors and has been removed from the UNFCCC website.

The greenhouse gas emissions of UNFCCC were about 25,000 tCO2 per year. In the 2008 carbon footprint this has apparently been reduced to 1,687.2 tCO2.

How did they do it? I mean, even if you offset the emissions they still occurred. Did they ground all staff? Do they have their own fleet of biofuel-powered airplanes?

Note also the precision - in 0.1 tCO2. Emission factors of IPCC have only 3 significant digits, and therefore the calculated CO2 emissions cannot have more than 3 significant digits either.

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ISO guidance for carbon footprints adds new complexity

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The advantage of ISO 14064-1 [*] is that it is much shorter than the 116 page GHG Protocol. The disadvantage is that the extra explanation is required because it is so short, and therefore ISO is now working on a guidance document: ISO 14069.

One of the things where ISO is providing guidance on is scope 2 emissions - the CO2 that is related to the electricity that you consume but that was not generated on your site. In the GHG Protocol approach you just take IEA emission factors. ISO proposes something much more complex. The mechanism is not clear yet, but involves something with type of electricity mix and consumption profile [level 1 and level 2]. Then, the reporting company can choose between taking into account all electricity, or only the mix of the most competitive technologies of the electricity market [attributional or consequential approach].

I needed to sit down with a glass of milk after reading this. It does not make carbon footprinting clearer or simpler. It also increases the choices for companies and therefore makes comparisons between footprints more difficult. Over the last 10 years I did not meet many companies that would be willing to go into this sort of detail for estimating their scope 2 emissions. So this whole idea of estimating scope 2 emissions seems like something for the ideabox.


[*]  Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals, 2006

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Making carbon footprints comparable

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The standard for carbon footprinting is ISO 14064-1. It is more or less a summary of the WBCSD/GHG Protocol. The problem with this standard is that it does not lead to standardized, comparable carbon footprints. This is because the standard leaves important choices open to the user. One of them is the way the user selects emission sources to report from - the organizational boundaries. The other is the way scope 3 [other indirect] emissions are reported - the operational boundaries.

Organizational boundaries: You can choose between a "control approach" and "equity share". In the control approach you report 100% of the emissions from sources over which you have financial or operation control. In the equity approach you only report the your portion of the facility - if you own 20%, you report 20%. In the equity approach you also report zero emissions for leased assets, since you don't own them. Imagine a bank with a leased office and leased cars. Their emissions will be zero in an equity share approach, whereas they would be fully reported in an operational control approach.

Operational boundaries: You can choose to not report scope 3 emissions at all. Most of the companies that do report scope 3 emissions limit the categories to commuting and business travel. Normally, mapping scope 3 emissions leads to [1] a lot of work collecting data with large associated uncertainties and [2] dwarfing of your scope 1 and 2 emissions. For example, the use of your Apple computer represents more than half of the greenhouse gases that can be associated with Apple.

What is being done about this? The carbon disclosure project [www.cdproject.net] is proposing that companies report using the financial control approach. ISO is working on a standard that gives further guidance to the application of the standard [ISO 14069, draft]. The WBCSD/WRI is working on tools for better assessment of scope 3 emissions [www.ghgprotocol.org]. For the time being you will have to take a very good look at the details of the carbon footprint of an organization before you start comparing.

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