Guidelines for effective climate protection in companies

|  January 31, 2023

🕓 Reading time 8 minutes

1. Base all climate decisions on greenhouse gas emissions 

Global warming and the associated Climate change are the greatest challenges of our time. Since industrialization, the global warming has been significantly released greenhouse gas emissions because they keep heat radiation in the troposphere instead of letting it escape.

The most important cause of climate change is carbon dioxide, CO2. Other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also involved. These greenhouse gases are converted into CO2-equivalent emissions based on their global warming potential. All relevant emissions are therefore summarized under the unit CO2e. In everyday language, the "e" is often omitted and only CO2 is used. In the vast majority of cases, however, this refers to all greenhouse gas emissions.

Protecting the climate therefore ultimately means to reduce greenhouse gas equivalent emissions. All climate decisions must be based on this target, supported by data.

2. Protect your climate not symbolically but effectively

Saving paper and cycling may seem good and sensible for the climate at first glance. However, upon closer inspection, these measures usually have very little or no impact on the climate. no noticeable effect on the Climate protection.

The following example comes from a company in the serviced real estate sector in Germany. Switching entirely to cycling or walking (employee commuting) would hardly result in a noticeable reduction. While investing a lot of money in expensive cycling infrastructure for such measures is positive for employees, it is not good for the climate. The budget could be used elsewhere. enables significantly greater emission reduction.

What you should learn from this: Climate protection-Decisions cannot be made on a whim. Sound data is needed to make effective Climate protection to be able to operate.

3. Take your influence as a company in reducing emissions seriously

According to a study by the Federal Environment Agency, over 60% of greenhouse gas emissions released in 2017 were attributable to the commercial, industrial, and energy sectors. Companies are therefore a major source of emissions and bear a significant responsibility to address them.

For this reason, the EU has now also adopted a new CSRD guideline on sustainability reporting, the reporting of climate indicators is mandatory: From 2024, companies must report their CO2 indicators according to certain size criteria in accordance with Climate standard mandatory publication in the management report and implementation of reduction targets.

Learn more about CSRD in our other publications, such as the Blog post on the CSRD and our CSRD briefing:

4. Ensure quality and comparability of your Emissions figures secure

To ensure high-quality and comparable data collection, reporting standards have been created, such as the ESRS E1 in the context of the CSRD and the Carbon Accounting and Reporting Standard of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Reputable Climate protection-Companies, like us at Green Vision Solutions, in the CCF survey.

It is interesting to break down your corporate emissions in three scopes. The three scopes serve to distinguish between direct and indirect emissions in the calculation and reporting.

Your indirect greenhouse gas emissions in Scope 3 are emissions that result from your business activities but occur at a source owned or controlled by another party. This includes, among other things, energy consumption in rented properties or vehicles, the purchase of goods and services, waste disposal, water and wastewater, business travel, and employee commuting. Indirect emissions from these upstream or downstream activities in your value chain are therefore also direct emissions from another party.

To achieve high-quality results, you should consider the following three points when collecting key figures:

1. The key performance indicators must be collected according to a verified process and cover all three scopes. Considering only data from Scopes 1 and 2 is not sufficient.
2. The recording must take into account the internationally recognized standards (GHG Protocol and ESRS).
3. Wherever possible, the use of current and individual emissions data should be ensured.

5. Pursue the following concrete goals with the Corporate Carbon Footprint Survey:

The Corporate Carbon Footprint aims to find out

1. how many greenhouse gas emissions are caused by your company's activities
2. from which specific sources they come and
3. where emission hotspots are located that can be reduced.

The key figures should be prepared for internal monitoring, for example in a Dashboard. In this, you can track your total emissions, gain insight into your emission hotspots and savings potential, and get a detailed breakdown of all partial emissions, energy consumption, and scopes.

The next two steps are

1. concrete reduction targets to set ambitious but realistic targets with clear deadlines (e.g. reducing emissions from heat energy by 50% by 2030) and
2. Optimization measures to be developedthat implement their reduction potential and thereby enable maximum greenhouse gas savings per euro of investment volume (e.g. switching to green electricity as of the next possible calendar year).

After this procedure you will be able

• to comply with legal climate obligations in Germany and the EU,
• to conduct corporate risk management with regard to climate factors
• and to communicate your commitment to all stakeholders transparently and on an equal footing.

If you would like to learn more about the upcoming reporting requirements, please attend one of our events, such as the upcoming webinar, or contact us. You can find more information on our website.