Carbon audit is an essential mechanism that reveals the environmental performance of an organisation and enables ESG and Sustainability reporting
Carbon Audit is defined as a systematic approach to identify & quantify Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions generated within a defined boundary such as an organisation or a building.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG) Protocol has established internationally accepted GHG accounting & reporting standards and tools and it is the model for most national GHG reporting protocols. The five guiding principles embodied within the GHG Protocol are:
- Relevance: Boundaries, data, assumptions & methodologies must reflect the emission status of the building.
- Completeness: should account and report all GHG emissions and removals. Specific exclusions should be disclosed and justified.
- Consistency: should use consistent methodologies to allow meaningful comparisons in the GHG-related information including trends over time.
- Accuracy: should ensure that any bias & uncertainties in quantifying GHG emissions & removals are minimised, as far as practicable.
- Transparency: should disclose sufficient & appropriate information, assumptions & references to allow the users of the report to arrive at conclusions with a reasonable confidence.
A typical carbon audit process performed by the AEE team includes the following steps:
- Determine the Organisational Boundary – the physical boundary for accounting and reporting. Typically, it matches the boundary of the building concerned but the boundary can be chosen to account for emissions for adjoining buildings or those sharing centrally provided services.
- Determine the Operation Boundary. Typically, it includes emissions for which the organisation is responsible as well as emissions removals from the site.
- Determine the reporting period – usually 12 months to match other accounting cycle.
- Collect necessary data and quantify the GHG emissions.
- Prepare the report – initially for Scopes 1 and 2 and then optional Scope 3 sources.
