In my last column, I pointed to the benefits of understanding and managing carbon emissions in installers businesses. It’s a process that will take time, but it’s important to head in the right direction from the start.
Having a clear vision of your business carbon emissions is now a vital part of tendering for work. Public and private sector clients are highly focused on reducing emissions from the built environment, and carbon is being measured along the entire construction supply chain – from design to installation and operation. Even travel to site will be included in that calculation.
This means that the carbon emissions from your business will impact the carbon footprint of every project you and your team work on. So, one of the first steps on the road to carbon reduction is understanding the size of your business carbon footprint today. It’s impossible to improve if you don’t know what your baseline is.
Calculations can be time consuming, so you can opt to work with specialists who can help
Oli Collins Marketing Manager for Contractors
Scope out your footprint
When drawing up a picture of your business carbon footprint, it’s useful to think of them in three categories. These are often referred to as ‘scopes’:
Scope 1: Emissions that your business controls directly. This can be from heating systems in your business premises that use gas or oil, as well as fuel used in company vehicles.
Scope 2: Emissions created from electricity used in your business. Electricity generated from fossil fuels (most often natural gas in the UK) creates emissions when used. Scope 2 emissions therefore relate very closely to your business electricity use.
Scope 3: Emissions not directly controlled by your business, but which are created from your business activity. They can include the goods and services you purchase to run your business (stationery, manufactured equipment, parts etc), business waste disposal, and employee travel (to the office or customer sites).
In theory, Scope 3 emissions could be extensive, but it is possible to set boundaries of measurement - as long as you’re transparent in reporting what’s being measured.
Scope 3 is also where you, as a supplier to your customer, have a direct impact on their carbon footprint, so providing relevant information to them is highly likely to earn ‘brownie points’.
Measuring and translating
You then have to take each activity and translate that into an amount of associated emissions. This is done using UK government ‘conversion factors’. These factors are provided in spreadsheet format and require input such as distance travelled, litres of fuel used or tonnes of waste disposed.
The process of measuring Scope 1 and 2 emissions can start within the business, gathering records on energy consumption from utility bills and travel data.
This is where your in-house Carbon Team (mentioned in my previous blog) comes into its own – gathering information from around the business for collation in a central database or spreadsheet.
Carrying out these calculations can be complex and time consuming, so businesses opt to work with specialists who can do this work with them.
For example, the Mitsubishi Electric Committed Climate Reduction Programme works with Climate Partner, an organisation that specialises in helping companies understand and measure their carbon footprints.
An added benefit of working with an external third party is that it can provide robust measurement and provide assurances to your customers that calculations are produced by unbiased experts.
Useful stages on the way
Once you have a carbon footprint figure for your business, you can take a view on your reduction target. The UK has a national goal of Net Zero by 2050, and this may be a figure you would like to reflect in your business.
However, it is useful to have stages along the way to aim for, and it’s also vital to take an annual assessment of progress.
Mitsubishi Electric is working with its contractor partners to help them tackle the challenge of carbon emissions reduction – and to reap the benefits.
Our Committed Carbon Reduction Programme (CCRP) provides training in these areas, and you can link with Carbon Partners through the scheme.
Existing partners who would like to join the CCRP can click here for a pathway to all things CCRP.
Building owners or businesses wanting to find a CCRP-accredited partner should visit our find an installer page.
There is also a general 'sustainability' section of our website.
Oliver Collins is Marketing Manager for Contractors
