Carbon accounting7 min read

Scope 1, 2 and 3 for the person who owns the data

The request usually arrives in October. Finance needs scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for the reporting year, in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, split by legal entity, and they need it in about six weeks. It lands on your desk because you already hold the fuel and utility data, and because nobody else in the building can name an emission factor.

You can define the three scopes in a minute. What eats the six weeks is that finance is not asking an environmental question; they are asking an accounting question that happens to be denominated in tonnes, and they will apply to it the evidence standard they apply to everything else that reaches a statement.

What each scope is actually asking for

Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources you own or control. Combustion in your own boilers, furnaces, kilns and vehicles, plus fugitive releases such as refrigerant loss, plus any process emissions that come out of the chemistry rather than out of a fuel.