The scoop: You can’t improve what you can’t measure. An organization must accurately measure GHG emissions and carbon footprint to improve its environmental sustainability outlook.
Here’s an interesting set of stats:
99% of F500 companies report being “sustainability-conscious” or mention it as a priority in their goal statements.
A little over 60% made commitments to reduce emissions with varying degrees of comprehensiveness. A common goal is to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, yet most companies don’t have decarbonization roadmaps or intermediary reduction targets.
And less than 15% set long-term and short-term reduction targets in line with corporate standards derived from the latest climate science.
These numbers tell a straightforward story. Sustainability gets a lot of lip service, but most businesses haven’t invested time and money into this objective. Creating a carbon footprint baseline is a high-impact first step in any organization’s sustainability journey, and this exercise achieves diverse goals within profitability and risk management.
Emissions accounting terminology may seem complex, but by the end of this article, we’ll find that the foundations of GHG emissions accounting are relatively intuitive. It’s just a matter of breaking up different impact areas of an organization into smaller, digestible bites.
Dig deeper → 5 min
