ISO14064-1 Green house gas inventory

Climate change arising from anthropogenic activity has been identified as one of the greatest challenges facing the world and will continue to affect business and citizens over future decades.

Climate change has implications for both human and natural systems and could lead to significant impacts on resource availability, economic activity, and human wellbeing. In response, international, regional, national, and local initiatives are being developed and implemented by public and private sectors to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere, as well as to facilitate adaptation to climate change.

There is a need for an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge. ISO1064-1 as a standard can support the transformation of your information and data in a way that supports the addressal of climate change.

GHG initiatives on mitigation rely on the quantification, monitoring, reporting and verification of GHG emissions and/or removals.

The ISO 14060 family provides clarity and consistency for quantifying, monitoring, reporting, and validating or verifying GHG emissions and removals to support sustainable development through a low-carbon economy and to benefit organizations, project proponents and interested parties worldwide.

Specifically, the use of the ISO 14060 family involves:

·????????enhances the environmental integrity of GHG quantification; — enhances the credibility, consistency, and transparency of GHG quantification, monitoring, reporting, verification, and validation;

·????????facilitates the development and implementation of GHG management strategies and plans;

·????????facilitates the development and implementation of mitigation actions through emission reductions or removal enhancements;

·????????facilitates the ability to track performance and progress in the reduction of GHG emissions and/or increase in GHG removals.

Applications of this family of ISOs include the making of corporate decisions surrounding the identification of emission reduction opportunities and increasing profitability by reducing energy consumption. The management of risks and opportunities is also included, along with climate-related risks, including financial, regulatory, supply chain, product and customer, litigation, reputational risks, and its opportunity for business. Voluntary initiatives such as the participation in voluntary GHG registries or sustainability reporting initiatives. GHG markets, such as the buying and selling of GHG allowances or credits. Lastly, one application is the regulatory GHG programmes (related to PPN below), such as credit for early action, agreements, and national reporting initiatives.

The ISO14064-1 details the principles and requirements for designing, developing, managing, and reporting your organisational GHG inventories. It includes requirements for determining GHG emission and removal boundaries for your organisation, the quantification of these emissions and removes and the identification of specific actions that your organisation must take in improving your GHG management.

The standard also includes specific requirements and guidance on the quality management for your inventory reporting, internal auditing and your organisations roles and responsibilities in the verification of your GHG emissions inventory and removals.

ISO14064-1 has 5 key principles, these are:

·????????Relevance -?means that the sources of GHG emissions, the data and methodologies must be appropriate to the needs of the intended user, i.e., your organisation.?

·????????Completeness - means that all relevant GHG emissions and removals must be included in your inventory.

·????????Consistency – this means that meaningful comparisons must be present within all of your organisations GHG-related information.

·????????Accuracy – this means that your organisation must reduce bias within your inventory, as well as remove any and all uncertainties as far as it is practicable.

·????????Transparency – this means that there should be the disclosure of sufficiency and appropriate GHG-related information to allow your organisation to make decisions surrounding the management of your operational GHG emissions with reasonable confidence.

A baseline year, i.e., a full 12-month period, must be established in order for this standard to be conducted. Once this has been selected and a quantification methodology agreed upon, the emissions can be calculated using conversion factors from organisations like DEFRA / BEIS which are produced annually by the UK government and are the industry standard for the quantification of GHG emissions in the UK. Other conversion factors can be used such as IPCC, but these are primarily used if your organisation also operates internationally.

Once the inventory is developed, your organisation can look at the total and what aspects significantly contribute in terms of emissions and set GHG emission reduction or removal enhancement targets.

These could involve setting key performance indicators to reduce across the board within your organisation in terms of utilities (electricity, gas, heat, steam, FGAS), travel (both scope 1 and scope 3) and largely, the emissions associated with your supply chain as these are usually the largest contributions to a greenhouse gas inventory.

The following information must be reported alongside these targets:

·????????Period covered by the target including the year and target completion year.

·????????Type of target (whether based on intensity or absolute)

·????????Category of emissions included in the target.

·????????The number of reductions and its unit expressed in accordance with the type of target.

These targets should be considered to be related to climate science, reduction potential, the context (whether international or national) and the sectorial context within your organisation.

The report for your GHG emissions inventory shall be prepared following quantification. It should be consistent with the intended uses of the GHG inventory, to facilitate its verification if your wish to go ahead with certain GHG programmes, or to inform internal or external stakeholders – which needs to conform to this standard.

As stated in the introduction to this standard, there are many applications which arise from ISO14064-1. Most recently, the requirement from the UK government set out in Procurement Policy Note 06/21. This means that those organisations wishing to bid for governmental contracts over ￡5 million, must take account of Carbon Reduction Plans and conduct a verified GHG emissions inventory in order to win this work.

Whilst this may largely not apply to most organisations, there is a ripple effect through supply chains and smaller companies may be swept up into this so implementing a standard like ISO14064-1 to account your GHG emissions and develop an inventory is a great step in business security and future proofing going forwards, as well as the benefits of improving your environmental awareness through this exercise and reducing your organisational carbon footprint.

At Crowberry Consulting?, we can guide your organisation through a gap analysis against the standard and the development of a Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions against the ISO14064-1 standard and provide recommendations to improve your conformance to this standard, as well as navigate the disclosure, validation and verification requirements needed to achieve the ISO14064-1, Get in touch with us today if you are wishing to implement this standard! The ISO 14064-1 can also be used in combination with PAS2060 a current framework for carbon neutrality.

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References:

PPN 06/21 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1054374/PPN-0621-Taking-account-of-Carbon-Reduction-Plans-Jan22__1_.pdf