THE CARBON

ACCOUNTING
PLAYBOOK
A guide to understanding carbon accounting, your organization’s
environmental footprint, and how you can take action.

1
Overview

In this playbook we’ll discuss the basics of carbon accounting, help you

understand the operational scopes, and provide guidance for conducting your

organization’s greenhouse gas inventory.

SEC T I O N 1

Master Carbon Accounting Basics

SEC T I O N 2

Understand the Accounting Scopes

and Requirements

SEC T I O N 3

Conduct your Greenhouse Gas Inventory

& Take Action

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SEC TION 1

Master Carbon Accounting Basics

What is Carbon Accounting?

Carbon accounting is the process by which organizations quantify their

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, so that they may understand their climate

impact, set goals to limit their emissions and identify risks and opportunities

for the business. In some organizations, this is also known as a carbon or

greenhouse gas inventory.

Carbon accounting is the foundation for implementing meaningful climate

action in your organization. Once you take inventory of your greenhouse gas

(GHG) emissions, you can start to make carbon reduction plans that support

your sustainability strategy.

What are Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

The Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty committing states to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions, identifies six types of greenhouse gases, of which

three are most closely related to human activity - carbon dioxide (CO2),

methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20).

Greenhouse gases trap heat, which sustains life on Earth by allowing the

sun to warm the earth, and prevents the warmth from escaping into space.

However, an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, in large part caused by

human activity, is disrupting the atmospheric balance that maintains our

climate and resulting in extreme global effects on ecosystems, economies, and

communities.

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 The world uses the common unit CO2e, the carbon dioxide equivalent, to

simplify discussion around greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA defines CO2e

as the number of metric tons of CO2 emissions with the same warming

potential as one metric ton of another greenhouse gas.

Why conduct a carbon accounting process?

The need to deliver high quality data to validate environmental claims and take

action has never been higher. Pressure from investors, employees, customers

and communities means that increasingly, sustainability is tied to a variety of

risk factors for companies: financial risk, reputational risk, business continuity

risk, and the risk that a company’s social license to operate may be jeopardized.

Carbon accounting is critical for measuring your climate impact and then

taking action. “Companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-

carbon emissions will be punished by investors, and go bankrupt,” the governor

of the Bank of England, and now UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and

Finance, Mark Carney warns. But, wherever there are risks, there are also

opportunities. Companies that prioritize sustainability have the advantage of

seeing ahead, seizing opportunities and avoiding hazards better than those
who look shorter term and in a more siloed fashion.

66%
OF EXECUTIVES WHO RESPONDED TO AN ENVIRONMENTAL
RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (ERM) SURVEY SAID THEIR ORGANIZATION
WAS FACING SIGNIFICANT PRESSURE FROM INVESTORS TO REPORT ON
CLIMATE-RELATED RISK AND MANAGEMENT.*

* “Sustainability: Emerging From Its Echo Chamber,” by Matt Haddon and Freddie Hospedales, https://www.erm.com/insights/sustainability-emerging-from-its-echo-chamber/

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SEC TION 2

Understand the Accounting

Scopes and Requirements

Scopes and Operational Control

Companies’ environmental footprints come from both direct emissions,

those within the operational control of the company, and indirect emissions,

emissions that are the result of the company, but occur at sources owned by

another company. Companies therefore manage their carbon footprint through

the framework of three “scopes”:

Scope 1
Emissions from direct activities of the company, such as
fuel combustion from onsite gas-fired boilers, or emissions
produced by company-owned vehicles.

Scope 2
Emissions from the generation of purchased or acquired
electricity, steam, heat, or cooling consumed by the reporting
company.

Scope 3
Indirect emissions from all other sources in the company’s
supply chain, such as employee commuting, business travel,
raw materials, distribution, and more.

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 Many companies will begin by setting targets on the emissions within their
direct control (Scope 1 & 2 emissions) since it can be easier to influence.
However, often Scope 3 emissions are the largest portion of a company’s
environmental footprint. There is an increasing focus on Scope 3 emissions
with many companies setting science-based targets to address their impact.

OVERVIEW OF GHP PROTOCOL SCOPES AND EMISSIONS ACROSS THE VALUE CHAIN*

CO2 CH4 N 2O HFCs PFCs SF6 NF3

purchased transporation
goods and and distribution
services company
facilities

leased assets investments

capital
goods processing of
sold products
company
employee vehicles
commuting
franchises
fuel and
energy related
activities use of sold
business products
travel leased assets
transporation
and distribution waste end-of-life treatment
generated in of sold products
operations

Upstream activities Reporting Company Downstream activitvies

* GRAPHIC CHART - Modified from the original art on https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/standards/Scope3_Calculation_Guidance_0.pdf

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 Assemble your team

Carbon accounting requires collaboration with many internal and external

stakeholders, such as your company’s accounting team, travel team, building
management and external suppliers.

There are challenges

The data can be incomplete, in varying units, for a variety of time periods and
in different sources (spreadsheets and bills). Without consistency, a guiding set
of calculations, and a single source of truth, the process can be taxing.

There are solutions

Carbon accounting can be an incredibly resource intensive process, taking

time, expertise, and budget, but it doesn’t have to be. Salesforce Sustainability
Cloud enables organizations to quickly track, analyze and report reliable
environmental data to help them reduce their carbon emissions. A company’s
carbon data is easily surfaced in Salesforce Einstein Analytics, which creates
dynamic reports and dashboards—both for audit purposes and for executive
engagement—with insights that empower businesses to drive climate action
programs at scale.

Learn more about Greenhouse gases in your

supply chain and climate action you can take.
GHG PROTOCOL

HTTPS://SUPPLYCHAIN.EDF.ORG/RESOURCES/CARBON-ACCOUNTING/

HTTPS://DAVIDSUZUKI.ORG/WHAT-YOU-CAN-DO/GREENHOUSE-GASES/

In the next section we’ll walk you through how to take a Greenhouse gas inventory
in detail so that you can know what to expect as you go through the process.

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SEC TION 3

Conduct Your Greenhouse Gas

Inventory & Take Action

Getting Started — Asset confirmation

In aligning with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a set of guidance documents

that most organizations follow in crafting a greenhouse gas inventory,
organizations must first identify which of their assets and activities should be
included in their GHG inventory ‘boundary.’ Organizations identify and declare
which assets they own, lease and fully operate, and may also identify other
assets or business activities to include in the inventory.

Data Collection

Next organizations collect and process data on energy-use activities that emit
greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, such as electricity and natural gas usage
in a building, commercial flights for business travel, and many other activities.

Data Quality Control

Organizations should attempt to fill in data gaps where they exist. For example,
it may not be possible to obtain electricity data for leased office space, but an
organization must still make an attempt to account for the electricity use of
that space.

Applying Renewable Energy

The GHG Protocol recognizes that electricity emissions can be calculated in

multiple ways. One method (called the “location-based” method) is a general
‘one size fits all’ method, using broadly averaged emissions data. The “market-
based” method allows an organization to calculate its electricity emissions in a
more detailed way with fine-grained emissions factors and accounting for any
renewable energy purchases made by the organization. The GHG Protocol and
many reporting bodies recommend that both values be stated.

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Internal Review

An internal review step should be part of the GHG inventory process, in which a
person within the organization checks the analysis that has been prepared.

Third-party Review

Some organizations undergo an independent audit of their GHG inventories for

full verification. In spirit, this is very similar to a third party audit of the financial
records and claims of a publicly-traded company. The auditor’s purpose is to
check the accuracy and completeness of the GHG inventory, and to officially
sign off on the inventory, prior to publication.

Take climate action

Sustainability Cloud comes with analytics dashboards that help users make
sense of their organization’s carbon inventory. These dashboards help users drill
deeply into their organization’s energy usage patterns and carbon emissions
intensities to find areas to focus on reducing environmental impact.

“
“There are steps that business can take now, while there’s still
time, to prevent the global temperature from rising more than
1.5 degrees Celsius. Every company can do something, whether
reducing emissions in their operations and across their sector,
striving for net-zero emissions like Salesforce, moving toward
renewable energies or aligning their operations and supply
chains with emissions reduction targets.”

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce

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Climate change is one of the biggest, most complex and
most important challenges humans have ever faced.
It impacts every individual, company, city and nation. The planet needs
bold action now, which is why Salesforce is committed to ambitious climate
leadership solutions that scale and have impact. Please join us on the journey.

GET STARTED

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