Councils – emissions from your own estate and operations

First and foremost, councils should be looking to see what you can do about emissions from your own estate and operations – in other words, from council buildings and the services that you run. That could be extended further to include any emissions from services that are contracted out to external organisations that provide services on your behalf. All of these will be activities over which you exert some influence on emissions and their source. Better still, some will be things that you actually control yourselves.
 
Emissions from the council’s own estate and operations
 
If you have a target that only covers your own organisation's emissions, or want to establish one, then you will need to give some thought to what are called scopes. There are three defined scopes which distinguish different categories of emissions. All of these are things that councils either control or can influence.

Scope 1 –

these are also called direct emissions, and they arise from any activities which involve burning fossil fuels. So, for example, driving a road vehicle or using a gas boiler to provide heating. If you are driving a petrol or diesel vehicle, your engine is burning fuel, and the emissions will come out of the exhaust pipe. If you use a gas boiler, the emissions arise from burning the gas, and come out of the flue from the boiler.

Scope 2 –   

these are often called indirect emissions. They occur elsewhere, but relate to the consumption of electricity, heat or steam which the organisation has purchased. The majority of this will be electricity, which comes from the grid, but which is generated elsewhere. When you use electricity, the emissions don’t arise at the place where that electricity is used, in the way that they do if you burn gas for example. However, if the electricity comes from the grid, then there will generally be emissions arising at the power station where that electricity is generated. That will be from burning either gas or coal. If the electricity is generated from renewable sources though, these emissions will be zero.

Scope 3 –   

this is the most complicated of the three scopes. It includes all other indirect emissions not included in Scope 2 which arise either upstream or downstream. This means emissions which arise from, for example: purchased goods; services that you buy in; employee commuting or business travel; waste disposal; investments. These are just a few examples - there are other sources which will also need to be given consideration. Guidance does exist on how to calculate these emissions – however, if you are an organisation reporting your emissions, it is not mandatory to include everything under Scope 3. It is up to you what you do and don’t include.

As with countries, it’s important that all organisations aim to measure emissions in the same way, and include the same things. Unlike with national reporting though, although guidance does exist, there are no firm rules on emissions accounting and reporting. How to go about this is currently at the discretion of the organisation doing the reporting. Which makes it difficult to know if you are on course to meet your target. So how will you know when you’ve reached net-zero?
 
Reporting your emissions in this way is far from simple. If you’d like to know more about how to measure and report your own emissions though, GreenGoals can help. So please do get in touch.
 
A word we hear a lot these days is “greenwashing”. This covers a multitude of sins, but one obvious trick is for organisations to pick and choose only certain sources of emissions to include in their target and what they report. That is, those that are easiest to do something about. That could make your organisation look better to the public, but it won’t help address the climate crisis.