Carbon Footprint Verification

Climate change is a global issue which demands the attention of organizations, governments and individuals alike.  Already, forward-thinking organizations have begun voluntarily declaring their GHG emissions for reasons such as risk management, cost reduction, brand protection, and attracting socially responsible investment.  And in the process those organizations have prepared themselves for the GHG legislation of tomorrow.

The process of measuring, calculating and declaring your organization’s direct and indirect GHG emissions is typically referred to as carbon footprinting. An accurate carbon footprint is an important step to manage and reduce the impact of your organization on climate change. 

Firstly you need to decide on the scope of footprint that best suits your needs, while ensuring that it's sufficiently complete to be credible. The accuracy and validity of your footprint is dependent on a clear, consistent and transparent approach throughout the process of calculation.  BSI provides training courses on the current best practice approaches to footprinting to enable you to get started.

Once you have established your carbon footprint you can begin implementing programmes to manage and reduce carbon emissions across your organization, and begin realizing cost savings.

Verifying your carbon footprint is important to ensure it is robust enough to be declared to demonstrate your organization’s positive approach to climate change.

Who is it relevant to?

Carbon Footprint Verification is relevant to all types of organizations. 

• Those already reporting GHG emissions for mandatory schemes that want to widen the scope to cover the whole organization
• Those in industries which are shortly going to be drawn into a mandatory GHG emissions scheme
• Those that are reporting voluntarily to initiatives such as the Carbon Disclosure Project
• Those smaller organizations looking for a manageable first step in promoting their contribution to the environment

Why choose us?

BSI is participating in many emerging climate change initiatives and contributes to the standards against which carbon footprints can be verified.  

For further information please request a quote or contact us

Benefits of managing your carbon footprint

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There are a range of benefits associated with calculating and managing your carbon footprint:

• Mitigate climate change
  Reduce your organization’s greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate global warming or destructive climate change
• Improve staff motivation and retention
  Involve your staff in devising and implementing carbon reduction plans, giving them the ability to “make a difference” as well as benefiting from their business insight
• Prepare for impending legislation
  Implement systems ahead of emerging regulations and future requirements when your organization’s emissions may be given a monetary value
• Reduce costs
  Drive savings with carbon reduction initiatives in operations and secondary activities such as energy consumption for heat and lighting, transport and travel
• Manage risks
  Understand the level of carbon risk exposure and in which parts of your organization it can be reduced most efficiently
  

Benefits of verifying your carbon footprint

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• Assure reporting
  Trust that your information is accurate, relevant, complete, and consistent over time for management decision making.  As well as assuring that the footprint is transparent and credible to external stakeholders and voluntary or regulated reporting schemes
• Differentiate from competition
  Prove that your organization takes its environmental impact seriously, and benchmark against the competition in your supply chain
• Enhance reputation
  Demonstrate, with early voluntary action, your organization’s commitment to cut carbon emissions to shareholders, customers, and employees
• Attract investment
  Your organization’s enhanced reputation can give the organization improved access to capital through ratings on the growing number of market indices such as the FTSE4Good and DJSI.
• Manage reputational risk
  Have confidence that your organization has considered the full scope of processes and emissions, and that the information is robust enough to withstand media scrutiny
• Credible and efficient carbon neutrality
  Underpin your claim with a proven best practice calculation, be assured that you are focussing on the most efficient abatement programmes and not purchasing more offset credits than necessary to achieve carbon neutrality.

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We are proud to present our new public course dedicated to teaching you the skills you need to choose a methodology, specify the boundary and scope of coverage which is appropriate for your organization. 

If you are an Environmental Manager, or involved with an existing Environmental Management System (EMS) such as ISO 14001 the chances are you already have many of the required skills, so why not top-up your knowledge with carbon management specifics on our new training course?

Next steps

For further information please request a quote or contact us

Carbon Footprint Verification (CFV) is fundamental to provide credibility.  It reassures regulators, customers, employees, shareholders, potential investors, environmental groups, the media and even your competitors, of the integrity, completeness and transparency of the carbon footprint calculations.  Any organization that is actively measuring, or is establishing the procedures to arrive at its carbon footprint, irrespective of size, industry or location, could benefit from the additional rigour and expertise the CFV process brings.

BSI can verify your carbon footprint in accordance with management systems standard ISO 14065 and can be performed against the requirements of ISO 14064-1 and the WBCSD/WRI GHG protocol.

We will review the scope and methodology applied to your current carbon footprint calculations, taking into account the full range of your organization's emissions.  Throughout the verification process we will work with you to identify opportunities to improve your management of GHG data.

Our process for third party CFV embraces the highest standards of quality assurance and quality control procedures in the industry. So you can be sure that the information we provide is a complete and totally reliable basis for improving your performance in monitoring and reporting emissions.

For further information please request a quote or contact us