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What is an Organizational Boundary for Carbon Emissions Reporting?

By Daniel Stouffer

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 29Jan2010 Word count: 467 Viewed: 462 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

For an organization to accurately report its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it must first establish its organizational boundary. This refers to the legal composition of the company and whether it has direct control or otherwise over the sources of the emissions.

An organizational boundary take into account whether the operation is part of an umbrella company, a subsidiary and also determines whether the operation is in financial control of the assets or operational control as it refers to the gas emissions.

When an organization has determined its organizational boundary it must then establish an operational boundary which will define the scope of both direct and indirect emissions within that organizational boundary. There could be numerous operational levels within an organization and it is up to the directors of the operation to establish operational boundaries for the three emissions scopes. Once the operational boundary has been established it must be applied uniformly within the enterprise.

Within the operational boundary lies the potential for several different types of emissions scope. These are defined as direct, indirect or indirect optional emissions. If the enterprise has direct control over electricity generation or uses fossil fuel within its process it must report these under scope one. In addition, any kind of vehicle transportation that is directly utilized by the organization, cars, trucks or trains, must also be reported here. Accidental leak is a scope one reporting burden.

When energy is consumed an enterprise must report the emissions related to that consumption under scope two. The scope emissions are relatively easy to categorize, often by reference to meters.

When it comes to the third scope, reporting for this is still classified as optional and this can relate to emissions spent as a consequence of employee travel, supplier activities, etc. You will likely have to compose a life cycle analysis and identify the entire supply chain to identify the scope of emissions associated with your operation in this way.

It is not uncommon to find that a considerable amount of emissions are associated with the production of materials that you purchase for your business. Likewise, end of use disposal emissions should be identified.

Identification and categorization of all emission scopes, be they direct, indirect or optional can be quite a complex task and must be the responsibility of the highest levels of management. It should be understood that whereas reporting requirements may be identified as voluntary, this is very likely to become mandatory in short order. In addition, carbon pollution awareness has become mainstream and has attracted the direct interest of the consumer.

It is in the best interests of the enterprise to ensure that it is entirely transparent and has exercised extreme care and diligence when identifying its operational boundary and the variety of emission scopes that it needs to take responsibility for.

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