What are your calculation methodologies?
We follow guidance published by the world's leading climate standards organisations.
The spend based method is recognised by international standards to account for GHG emissions, like one of the world’s leading climate standards, the GHG protocol.
The GHG Protocol, that “supplies the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards’, considers the spend based method as one of the possible calculation methods to use, specially when no specific data is available or of low quality or to estimate the carbon footprint
So, our methodologies are 100% aligned to its approach.
Our method is conformant with other standards, regulations and disclosure programs, specially those requiring the inclusion of indirect emissions (scope 3), like the SBTi, GRI, CDP, that are based on the GHG Protocol or have very similar guidelines.
If you’d like a detailed run through get in touch and we’ll setup a call with our Chief Science Officer.
Supplier and Expense API Methodologies
There are two types of calculation records we hold: Direct and Indirect
Direct records mean that we have a recent carbon footprint from that particular company, for example IBM regularly disclose their carbon footprint and elsewhere disclose their revenue.
Using this information we can calculate how much carbon is likely emitted when you make purchases from IBM. This is sometimes referred to as the spend based method. The GHG protocol and many others recommend this as an approach when calculating the carbon footprint of your suppliers.
Indirect records are those that haven’t yet disclosed their carbon footprint. These are likely smaller companies and so many do not feature as prominently in your supply chain as larger companies tend to (that’s why they are bigger companies!).
Feel free to ask questions via email or book a time to speak. Before or after you get access.
Inputs to our model for calculating emissions for indirect records
Released by, amongst others the EPA and the UK’s Defra, these are among the most commonly used factors by carbon auditing and estimation tools. Their methodology is a useful one – looking at tht GDP of an industry and the emissions of that industry.
However, these Environmentally-extended input output (EEIO) models are not updated yearly, they vary in how often they are updated and have a categorisation (eg Inorganic chemicals??) which aren’t very useful when talking about company expenses.
We’re using a spend based method so half the calculation is how much something costs, as we know some things increase while others drop, these have uneven impacts on various categories.
For example the rising cost of fuel will impact logistics businesses far more than it will software companies. We regularly update our model with the latest inflation numbers from around the world.
One of the elements which has the biggest impact on the carbon intensity of a company is the source of the energy it uses, for example about 60% of the emissions associated with hotels is the energy used to heat/cool/clean. Moreover, it’s not the same consuming the electricity in Iceland, with 100% contribution of renewable sources, than in Turkey, which relies more on fossil fuels to produce electricity.
Because of these we look at the carbon intensity of the energy grid in the location of the expense or supplier. The good news is there is a lot of that data out there.
We calculate this at a region, country and state level, this means that even if the hotel hasn’t disclosed their footprint we can calculate the emissions whether they are in Alabama or Algeria.
We calculate this at a region, country and state level, this means that even if the hotel hasn’t disclosed their footprint we can calculate the emissions whether they are in Alabama or Algeria.
Within certain sectors there are a lot of disclosed carbon footprints for individual products, when a company only sells a few products this can provide an insight into the carbon footprint of the business. This means we can give especially accurate results in the construction and IT equipment industries – this data is also available via our product API.
We have one of the largest databases of company emissions factors in the world, this gives us unique insight into the emissions profile of a typical company in any given sector.
Expense API
- Inputs
- Company Name
- Amount
- Passthrough field
- Outputs
- Kg Co2e
- Passthrough field (if used)
- Scope
- Sasb Category
- Advice based on expense
Supplier API
- Inputs
- Company
- Location (if known)
- Industry (if known)
- Year
- Currency
- Outputs
Carbon intensity kg Co2 / Currency
If Direct
- Source of revenue
- Source of emissions
- Date of last update
If Indirect
- Relevant publicly available inputs