Carbon Neutrality 101: Part One
For those interested in understanding the carbon neutrality process, we’ve created a holistic two-part carbon neutrality 101 series that covers the essential topics. While starting the carbon neutrality journey may seem daunting, with the right resources, it can be affordable, straightforward, and highly beneficial. Part one of this series covers the importance of carbon neutrality, why it matters and provides an introduction to carbon footprinting. Read on to start your neutrality journey.
Carbon neutrality 101 - the two part series:
Part One
Why Carbon Neutrality Matters: If we don’t take action now, the consequences of climate change may soon be irreparable. Learn more about why carbon neutrality matters.
An Introduction to Carbon Footprinting: Carbon footprinting can be a complicated process, involving multiple greenhouse gasses and various corporate boundaries. Explore how your organization can start footprinting.
Part Two
Insights into Methods for Offsetting Carbon Footprints: In today’s technological landscape, offsets are a necessary component of the neutrality process. Meet two of the industry’s leading providers.
Direction on Mitigating Carbon Footprints: A key component to neutrality is lowering (or mitigating) your year-over-year footprint. Delve into three key strategy sources for you and your organization.
Starting the Neutrality Process: Interested in learning more about the neutrality process? RyeStrategy specializes in comprehensive neutrality for small to medium sized non-manufacturing organizations – contact us today.
Why Carbon Neutrality Matters
Without a clean environment, there will be no more “business as usual”. Greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, are a primary contributor to the greenhouse effect, which traps solar heat energy within our atmosphere.
This causes a variety of environmental changes, most notably, the general heating of our planet, sea rise, glacial melting, and soil depletion. These effects can severely disrupt our ecosystems, food sources, lifestyles, supply chains, and general economic development.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that humans need to cut carbon dioxide emissions 45% by 2030 to prevent irreversible climate damage. We can already see its effects today: glaciers are melting, the Great Barrier Reef is dying, and in America, devastating wildfires have torn across the West Coast, burning millions of acres of land and creating severe respiratory health risks for thousands.
When thinking about greenhouse gas emissions, it can be easy to point to major contributors such as gas and agriculture, yet sources like transportation, electricity, and commercial overhead makes up nearly 67% of total GHG emissions in the US.
Without an effort to make considerable investments in carbon neutrality, the continuous rise in emissions can directly threaten the wellbeing of any business or industry, including yours.
Introduction to Carbon Footprinting
A carbon footprint is the sum of all emissions created by your organization’s activities over a specific period of time, usually a calendar year.
While CO2, or carbon dioxide, is the primary focus when it comes to global warming, your footprint is actually made up of several other environmentally damaging gasses as well, which are converted into CO2 equivalents (commonly referred to as CO2e).
Given the complicated nature of these emissions, numerous calculation methods have been devised over the years, however, the most commonly known and used technique is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, or the GHG. Currently, it is used by more than 9 out of 10 Fortune 500 companies who share sustainability metrics.
Carbon Calculations
While highly data-intensive and time-consuming, the actual process of calculating your carbon footprint comes down to simple multiplication and addition.
For example, if your office used 401,595 kWh of electricity over the course of 2019 and is located in California, we can multiply this figure by its corresponding CO2e emissions multiplier, 0.653 lbs of CO2e / kWh, sourced from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and get a final result: 262,241.54 pounds of CO2e, or 118.95 metric tons.
Key Sources
In order to provide an easily replicable and standardized process, the GHG Protocol has established a mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive framework for capturing all organizational CO2e emissions: the Scopes. A number of online guidance sources are available — we recommend utilizing information from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol website, as it is exhaustive and guaranteed to be correct.
Scope 1 information: https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/Guidance_Handbook_2019_FINAL.pdf
Scope 2 information: https://ghgprotocol.org/scope_2_guidance
Scope 3 information: https://ghgprotocol.org/scope-3-technical-calculation-guidance
We hope part one has been valuable in informing you on why carbon neutrality matters. Here is the second and final part of the guide: https://www.ryestrategy.com/blog/carbon-neutrality-101-part-two
Learn about our affordable carbon footprint solutions for small and medium-sized businesses
Book a free strategy session to discuss your climate goals with a sustainability manager.
About RyeStrategy
Based in Seattle, RyeStrategy is a CDP-accredited, mission-oriented company specialized in carbon accounting, mitigation coaching, and climate disclosure solutions for organizations at any point in their sustainability journey. Learn how RyeStrategy helped Salesforce, Ideascale, and Wazoku achieve their sustainability goals.
From exhaustive carbon footprinting and mitigation coaching, to setting science-based targets and reporting climate data to CDP, SBTi or custom reporting platforms, RyeStrategy acts as a hands-on extension of the team, custom-tailoring services to fulfill climate disclosure requirements easily and accurately.
Meet with a sustainability specialist to learn more about RyeStrategy solutions.
