You can’t be carbon neutral by ignoring the emissions from the products you sell

Posted on February 6 2020

As a result of the work I have been doing on  sustainable cost accounting I have become pretty familiar with this thing:The greenhouse gas protocol splits greenhouse gas emissions into three categories. Thankfully, they're pretty easy to define:

I've reproduced the Protocol's own description just to make clear that they really do think there's not much to this.

Except that there is. And that's because right now business has decided for reasons all of its own that only Scope 1 and 2 emissions are of importance. Mark Carney's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures summarises its reporting requirements pretty succinctly as follows:

Note that category (b). It says that Scope 3 need only be disclosed ‘if appropriate'. And what defines 'appropriate'? Nip up to the top of the column and you will find it is when management think that it is 'where such information is material'.

And as it turns out, almost no one does seem to think Scope 3 is material. So we end up with the absurd situation where airports claim they are carbon-neutral because they ignore the emissions from the planes that fly from them and coal mines can make the same claim because they say someone else burns the coal that they mine, and they claim that's got nothing to do with them when glaringly obviously that's untrue.

My points then are very simple ones.

First, any accounting standard for greenhouse gas emissions that does not require Scope 3 disclosure is incomplete. In fact, it's not a standard worth calling by that name because it ignores a crucial issue.

And second, anyone who claims they are carbon-neutral and ignores their Scope 3 emissions is making a claim that is simply not true.

And we need to say both of these things time, after time, after time.

Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:

4

4 Responses

  1. Trevor Phipps says:
    February 6 2020 at 8:27 am

    If a business is responsible for both upstream and downstream emissions, would that mean, in the case of Sainsburys which was discussed recently, that Sainsburys had to take account of the emissions of the farm that produced the meat it sells and the lorries of the delivery company that delivered it and also the car of its customer who bought the meat?

    And also that the farm had to take account of the delivery truck and Sainsburys and the customer and the delivery company also the farm, Sainsburys and the customer.

    Isn’t there quite a bit of double counting there?

    And since you earlier ruled out carbon offsetting that would mean that even a company which produced zero emissions and would still have to somehow provide in its accounts for the cost of producing zero emission cars for its customers?

    I suppose you could even add in the company that produced the packaging for the meat and the bin lorry that collected the packaging from the bin of the customer.

    How far upstream and downstream would each entity have to take this into account?

    Just trying to work out the practicalities here.

    • Richard Murphy says:
      February 6 2020 at 8:50 am

      There would only be double counting if a) everyone reported and b) most companies and no consumers will and c) if all the reporting was in the same category and they will not

      So the reality is that in that case requiring the largest companies – who are the only ones likely to report – to cover Scope 3 is the only way to get the real indication of their impact that will then result in pressure being brought to bear on them to change their behaviour, which is what is vital

      How far up and downstream?

      Without limit. And waste is completely within the spec, of course. Scope 3 says so.

      And is it practical? Why not?

      What’s the problem? Dealing with a few accounting issues or saving the planet? Which would you rather?

  2. Ray Hankin says:
    February 6 2020 at 10:23 am

    “What’s the problem? Dealing with a few accounting issues or saving the planet? Which would you rather? “..

    Stop trying to be so righteous!! ..why not be honest on here and just say this is the issue you attempting to carve out some funding for yourself and that is your prime motivation..