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Carbon Accounting

The document provides an overview of carbon footprint, carbon accounting, and greenhouse gas emissions, emphasizing their significance in climate change. It details the definitions, scopes of emissions, and principles of GHG accounting, along with methods for calculating carbon footprints and preparing GHG inventories. Additionally, it outlines standards and guidance for GHG accounting and includes a practical example of calculating CO2e emissions from natural gas consumption.

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22 views5 pages

Carbon Accounting

The document provides an overview of carbon footprint, carbon accounting, and greenhouse gas emissions, emphasizing their significance in climate change. It details the definitions, scopes of emissions, and principles of GHG accounting, along with methods for calculating carbon footprints and preparing GHG inventories. Additionally, it outlines standards and guidance for GHG accounting and includes a practical example of calculating CO2e emissions from natural gas consumption.

Uploaded by

rahulkhanleather
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Carbon Footprint:

➢ A carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) is a certain amount of gaseous emission
that are relevant to climate change and associated with human production and consumption
activities.
➢ According to IPCC, the definition of carbon footprint is: the measure of the exclusive total
amount of emissions of carbon dioxide that is directly and indirectly caused by an activity
or is accumulated over the lifecycle stages of a product.
➢ Carbon footprint is expressed as the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) which is mean to
sum up the greenhouse gas (GHGs) emission caused by the individual, organization, place
or product.
Carbon accounting:
➢ Carbon accounting (or GHG accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track
how much greenhouse gas an organization emits. It can also be used to track projects or
actions to reduce emissions in sectors such as forestry or renewable energy. Corporations,
cities and other groups use these techniques to help limit climate change.
➢ Organizations will often set an emission baseline, create targets for reducing emissions and
track progress towards them. The accounting methods enable them to do this in a more
consistent and transparent manner.

Greenhouse gases and Global Warming potential (GWP):

GHGs are gasses that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere; this creates (and exacerbates) a warming
effect on the planet’s surface that’s broadly known as global warming.

Excess GHGs are generally considered the result of human activities like burning fossil fuels,
electricity consumption, heat generation, agriculture and livestock operations, and more. There are
a number of greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and
hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), among others. While emissions may be the result of any of these
gasses, the standard unit for measuring emissions is CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent); meaning
that other GHGs are converted into CO2e for the purpose of carbon accounting. It’s important to
recognize that CO2e is only used to simplify the accounting process, as GHGs all have different
degrees of warming impact.

CO2e is an important unit of measurement because it’s universally accepted as the standard for
quantifying GHGs. It’s also employed across a variety of carbon market functions, including
how carbon credits and carbon offsets are structured (tons of CO2e).
Scopes of GHG emission:

Scopes can be thought of as “levels” of emissions, with some occurring under the company’s direct
control and others occurring within the supply chain or elsewhere outside of management’s direct
control.

• Scope 1 encompasses direct emissions from owned (or controlled) sources like company
vehicles and manufacturing facilities, etc.
• Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam,
heating, and cooling.
• Scope 3 is a very broad category that includes all “other” indirect emissions like business
travel, investments, end-of-life treatment of sold products, and purchased goods and
services (among others).

Standards and guidance available for GHG accounting:


➢ GHG protocol of World Resource Institute (WRI)/ World Business Council on Sustainable
Development (WBCSD): provides sector specific and general calculation tools and deals
with quantification of GHG reductions resulting due to adoption of mitigation methods in
it’s project protocol. It forms basis for most GHG accounting guidelines including ISO
14064 (Part 1 and 2).
➢ ISO 14064 (parts 1 and 2): it is an international standard for determination of boundaries,
quantification of GHG emissions, and removal. It also provides standard for designing of
GHG mitigation projects. (ISO 2006 a,b)
➢ IPCC guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, 2006: All countries that are
signatory to UNFCCC and committed to prepare, update and communicate their national
GHG emissions.
➢ ISO 14025; It is a standard for carrying out LCA.
Principles of GHG protocol:
GHG accounting and reporting should based on the following principles:
1. Relevance: Ensure the GHG inventory appropriately reflects the GHG emissions of the company
and serves the decision-making needs of users-both internal and external to the company.
2. Completeness: Account for and report on all GHG emission sources and activities within the
chosen inventory boundary.
3. Consistency: Use consistent methodologies to allow for meaningful comparisons of emission
over time. Transparently document any changes to the data, inventory boundaries, methods and
any other relevant factors in the time series.
4. Transparency: Address all the relevant issues in a factual and coherent manner , based on a clear
audit trail. Disclose any relevant assumptions and make appropriate references to the accounting
and calculation methodologies and data sources used.
5. Accuracy: Ensure that the quantification of GHG emissions is systematically neither over nor
under actual emissions, as far as can be judged and that uncertainties are reduced as far as
practicable. Achieve sufficient accuracy to enable users to make decisions with reasonable
assurance as to the reported information.

Carbon Footprint Calculation:


• For calculating carbon footprint, the amount of GHGs emitted / removed or embodied in
the life cycle of the product has to be estimated and added, technically known as GHG
accounting.
• Life cycle includes all the stages involved for a product such as its’ manufacture right from
bringing of raw material to final packaging, distribution, consumption/use and to the final
stages of disposal.
• Analysis of life cycle therefore is also called as “cradle to grave analysis”.
• Life cycle assessment (LCA) produces complete picture of inputs and outputs with respect
to generation of air pollutants, water use and wastewater generation, energy consumption,
GHGs emitted and any other similar parameter of interest and cost-benefit initiatives. This
assessment is often called as “Environmental LCA”.
There are five steps to calculate product carbon footprint:

Build process map of product’s life cycle

Assess boundaries and materiality

Collect data

Calculate the footprint

Check uncertainty
Process for Preparing a GHG Inventory

Broadly speaking, there are several important steps for an organization that is looking to leverage
carbon accounting to prepare a GHG inventory. These are:

• Understand the scopes and *organizational boundaries for calculating GHG emissions.
• Collect activity metrics, such as the amount of energy used per year and the amount of fuel
per year, from a variety of internal sources.
• Convert the activity metrics into carbon emissions by using a third-party carbon equivalent
calculator like that provided by the U.S. EPA. This offers “carbon factors,” or in other
words, the amount of carbon estimated to result from each activity metric.
• Determine which framework to use, calculate the scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, then sum
them to arrive at the final carbon footprint.
• Report emissions and disclose goals/targets for future improvement.

Calculating the GHG emissions:


GHG Emission= Energy consumption × Emission Factor× Global warming Potential
GHG Emissions= Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, Chlorofluorocarbons,
Hydrochlorofluorocarbons
Emission Factor= A value that attempts to relate the quantity of a pollutant released to the
atmosphere with an activity associated with the release of that pollutant.
Global Warming Potential= A measure that examines a GHG’s ability to trap heat in the
atmosphere in comparison to CO2 over a specific time period.
GHG emissions are measured in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)
Example: A company has a gas bill value of 14,356 m3 of natural gas. Find out the total CO2e
emission.
[Emission factors are listed here: CO2-1879 g CO2/m3, CH4-0.037 g CH4/m3, N2O-0.033 g
N2O/m3.Global Warming Potential: CO2 -1, CH4-25, N2O-298]
We know, in case of natural gas burning, CO2, CH4 and NO2 emission occurs.
Emission 1 (E1)= 14,356 m3× 1879 g CO2/m3= 26974924 g CO2 or 27 ton
Emission 2 (E2)= 14,356 m3× 0.037 g CH4/m3= 531.172 g CH4 or 0.0005 ton
Emission 3 ( E3)= - 0.033 g N2O/m3 ×0.033 g N2O/m3= 473.748 g N2O or 0.0005 ton
GHG Emission= Energy consumption × Emission Factor× Global warming Potential
E1= 27 t ×1=27 t CO2 e
E2= 0.005 t ×25 = 0.0125 t CO2 e
E3= 0.0005×298 = 0.149 t CO2e
So, Total Emission= (27+ 0.0125+ 0.149) t CO2 e
= 27.1615 t CO2 e

References:
1. Carbon footprint: current methods of estimation, Environ Monitoring Assessment (2011); Divya
Pandey, Springer
2. Carbon Accounting, https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/esg/carbon-accounting/

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