By Ghislaine Barry, Operations Support Excecutive
In 2001, the Greenhouse Gas Initiative Protocol first categorised business GHGs as scope 1 emissions, scope 2 emissions and scope 3 emissions to enable organisations to measure and manage their carbon footprint more effectively. This classification system has never been more important with the drive to halve carbon emissions by 2030 in accordance with the Paris Agreement. To manage your emissions and to report them accurately, it is imperative to understand them. In this short series, siccar will be diving into each category in detail.
What are Scope 1 emissions?
Scope 1 emissions are greenhouse gases released directly from a business during industrial processes and are mandatory to report. This is why they are often referred to as direct emissions as they are released into the atmosphere as a direct result of activities at a firm level and are the easiest to control. These can come from powering computers, driving vehicles, heating your buildings and running machinery to make your products.
Scope 1 emissions be divided into four categories:
- Stationary Combustion.
These are the emissions released from the burning of fossil fuels such as boilers being used to heat buildings or coal burning fires. - Mobile Combustion.
These are emissions released from an organisation’s vehicles, whether they are owned or leased, such as cars and vans that are fuelled by fossil fuels. Fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids fall under Scope 2 emissions. - Fugitive Emissions.
These are emissions caused by the unintentional release or leakage of greenhouse gasses such as fugitive emissions from refrigeration and air conditioning units which are notorious. - Process Emissions.
These are emissions released during industrial processes or on-site manufacturing such as the CO2 emissions that was produced during the processing or manufacturing of chemicals.
Efficient Emissions
If you are struggling to meet the requirements of scope 1-3 efficiently and need to find a way to manage and share your emissions data in a more secure fashion, then the siccar solution might be for you.
The Energy Transition Databox has been created in collaboration with our industry partner, Vysus Group, to assure the integrity of your emissions reporting, with insights to optimise operations and investment.
The Energy Transition Databox allows organisations to provide verifiable and auditable emissions data, ensuring that decarbonisation goals are met with high quality trusted data.