Introduction to Carboncap: What is it?

More and more businesses are starting to realise the importance of tracking their carbon footprint to reduce their impact on the environment. With this process being relatively data-heavy, finding effective ways to calculate and manage emissions is fast becoming instrumental in our fight against climate change.

The first step to achieving your sustainability goals is to find out what your current carbon footprint is. Once you know this, you can take steps to manage and ultimately reduce your emissions. We’re proud to introduce Carboncap, a new platform to help you achieve just that. 

What is a carbon footprint?

Before we dive deeper into exactly how to calculate the carbon footprint of your business, let’s take a closer look at what a carbon footprint actually is. 

Every individual or organisation has a carbon footprint - this is a measurement of how many greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere as a result of our activities. This calculation can also be applied to the production of products or services.

As an example, office sector services often produce 1 ton per employee, while industries like manufacturing, food or processing usually emit more like 10 tons and up per employee.   

A corporate carbon footprint takes into account both direct emissions like running your office facilities and indirect emissions like those resulting from product transportation and distribution.

These emissions are broadly arranged into three different categories or scopes by the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, one of the most common global accounting standards. 

As well as measuring carbon dioxide emissions, a carbon footprint also takes into account the number of other greenhouse gases released into the environment, including:

• Methane 
• Nitrous oxide
• Fluorinated gases 

The quantity of each greenhouse gas released during each step of your business process is converted into an equivalent amount of CO2.

Calculating your business's current carbon footprint is a vital first step on your journey towards reducing emissions, but if you’re not familiar with the process it can be a little daunting.

Common challenges calculating a corporate carbon footprint

When it comes to calculating a corporate carbon footprint, businesses can come up against a few common challenges. Let’s take a look at those in more detail.

1. Finding the best-quality data 

It can be very difficult to identify exactly what data you need to collect to calculate the carbon footprint of your business. First, you’ll need to identify sources of any emissions throughout your entire supply chain, before quantifying the levels of emissions using data from bills, invoices, and receipts.

Collecting quality data is the first step to ensuring your calculations are accurate. Once you’ve collated all your data, it then needs to be converted using emission factors so that you can work out your overall emissions. The sheer extent of data collection can feel like a serious task in its own right, and that’s before you’ve even started to calculate your footprint.

2. Using best practices

There are many different ways to set goals once you have calculated your carbon footprint, but here at Carboncap, we use Science Based Targets. This is a forward-thinking approach to setting climate action goals based on emissions targets linked to the Paris Agreement. Carboncap can help you set clear, science-based goals for the short, medium, and long-term. 

3. Staying compliant 

There are a few different global account standards used to help companies calculate their carbon footprint. Two of the most well-known are the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and ISO 14064. Depending on which standard you’re following, you’ll need to follow certain requirements when it comes to quantifying, monitoring, and reporting your emissions. Carboncap helps you meet these global standards, making it easier for your organisation to both quantify your emissions and stay compliant.

4. Taking action - how companies can reduce their carbon footprint 

Once your business has quantified your carbon emissions, it’s time to take action! Carboncap can help you create an action plan that’s aligned with your corporate business goals and that helps you focus on the highest business returns. Change the way you do business by implementing a strong climate strategy, and help secure our future. 

 Climate mitigation won’t happen without actions, and Carboncap can help you achieve just that.

5. Report and communicate to all stakeholders

We help you share your commitment, progress and results with employees, customers, investors and the world. Communicate your sustainability efforts to your internal and external stakeholders, and create value in the process.

Introducing Carboncap: simplify your CO2 management

We’ve developed Carboncap to help you measure, manage, and reduce your CO2 emissions. 

Making your carbon strategy a collaborative process based on the best available data will help you seize business opportunities and execute your carbon strategy effectively.

We’ve got your back.

Calculating your corporate carbon footprint can feel like a huge challenge, but we’re here to help. We created Carboncap specifically to offer businesses like yours three main benefits:

• Simplify your CO2 management. Our tool helps to remove complexity around measuring, analysing, and reporting your corporate carbon footprint. Save time on calculations and spend more time taking positive action.  
• Help you to take action. By shifting the focus onto expected emission reductions (CO2) you can demonstrate how effective measures can also translate into financial returns. 
• Foster stakeholder involvement. Reporting a corporate carbon footprint has historically involved a lot of dry data and complex spreadsheets. Instead, Carboncap’s user-friendly features can help you easily report and communicate your commitment, progress, and results with employees, stakeholders, investors, and the world.   

Book a demo and discover how to calculate and reduce your company's CO2 emissions efficiently, creating business opportunities in the process.