Accounting for Sustainability

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Accounting for Sustainability
EcoCare 2008

• Simon Miller
• simon_at_bestfootforward.com
• 0044 1865 250 818

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Best Foot Forward

• Oxford-based sustainability consultants.
• Established in 1997 after first footprint
  project in 1996
• Specialists in environmental accounting,
  particularly mass balance, carbon and ecological
  footprinting
• Core staff with a network of international
  partners associates
• Queens Award, ACCA and Biffaward winners
• Completed over 300 footprint studies.

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Contents

• Inconvenient truths
• Footprint foundations
• What is a footprint?
• Whats the point?
• What boundaries?
• Undertaking a footprint
• Footprints of health centres
• Other case studies
• Future developments
• What can you do?

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Inconvenient truths

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Global Use of Resources (1980 - 2002)
Source MOSUS project www.mosus.net
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Year of Peak Fish Harvest
Source Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Sea
Around Us project
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Year of Peak Fish Harvest
Source Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Sea
Around Us project
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Year of Peak Fish Harvest
Source Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Sea
Around Us project
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Humanitys Ecological Footprint 1961 - 2003
SUSTAINABILITY GAP
Unless we change direction, we are likely to end
up where we are going
Source Global Footprint Network / Best Foot
Forward
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At the moment, we are using 25 more than the
Earth can sustainably provide.
Source Global Footprint Network / Best Foot
Forward
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Rising to 100 by 2050.
Source Global Footprint Network / Best Foot
Forward
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Consumption varies by region
Average per capita footprint (gha)
Source Global Footprint Network / Best Foot
Forward
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Our rising carbon footprint is of particular
concern
Source Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J.
Andres. 2003
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Change in Temperature, Sea Level Northern
Hemisphere Snow Cover.
11 of the last 12 years (1995 -2006) rank among
the 12 warmest since 1850.
Source IPCC 4th Assessment report (February 2007)
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The climate is an angry beast and we are poking
at it with sticks
Source Brooks Adger (Ambio, In Press)
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2a - What is a carbon footprint?

• What is it a measurement of?
• The total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused
  by an individual or organisation, event or
  product. It should be expressed in carbon dioxide
  equivalent (CO2e)
• What units do we report results in?
• Grams/kilograms/tonnes of CO2e (normally per
  year)
• What are the benefits of measurement?
• Enables comparison in commensurate units
• Baseline information to inform carbon reduction
  strategies
• What do the numbers mean?
• 1 tonne (100kg) of CO2 is equivalent to
• 1700 miles in a SUV
• One months emissions of an average UK
  resident

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What is an ecological footprint?

• Calculated from energy and material flow data.
• Data can be derived from a number of
  sourcestrade, life cycle, survey etc.
• Biotic and abiotic consumption
• is transformed into an area-equivalent using
  footprint conversion factors.
• Aggregated to form single
• indicator global hectares

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2b - Whats the point?

• Completing a footprint will
• Allow us to tell our customers weve done it
• Show that our company/product is better than all
  others
• Enable us to offset our emissions and be carbon
  neutral
• Make us a greener company
• Help us reduce our energy use
• Provide baseline, diagnostic information to
  inform strategies to reduce the impacts of our
  activities on the physical environment

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Footprinting as a starting point
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Quantitative reductions

• Would instituting a travel plan or recycling
  deliver the highest carbon savings?
• Need for environmental objectives to be
  quantifiable.
• Start to measure the relative impacts of
  different activities and provide basis for
  strategy planning
• Consider the efficiency of reduction measures
• CO2 saved per
• CO2 saved per man day

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Embodied carbon

• Consider aluminium as an example
• bauxite mining
• production of alumina
• primary production
• semi-fabrication
• product manufacture
• the use phase
• end of life

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What can we footprint?

• Anything really
• Individual lifestyle
• Product
• Service
• Event
• Organisation
• Sector
• Region
• Country
• Increasingly recognised as an analysis method
  producing comparable outputs

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Comparative footprints
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London Health Sciences - Footprint Results
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Carbon neutral

• What does carbon neutral mean?
• Terminology for something having net zero
  emissions (for example, an organisation or
  product). As the organisation or product will
  typically have caused some greenhouse gas
  emissions, it is necessary to use carbon offsets
  to achieve neutrality. Carbon offsets are
  emissions reductions that have been made
  elsewhere and which are then sold to the entity
  that seeks to reduce its impact.
• How is it done?
• There are a range of offset schemes including
  tree planting, technology substitution and
  investing in tradable permits
• What are the benefits?
• Projects can make a tangible difference
• There will always be a residual carbon impact
• What are the problems?
• Projects/schemes funded do they make a
  difference?
• Traceability additionality
• Too cheap simply alleviate guilt

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2c What boundaries?
Source Helm et al 2007
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Scopes 1,2 and 3
Source Greenhouse Gas Protocol
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Radioheads USA tour
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3 Undertaking a footprint

• Define study boundaries
• Accounting period must be clearly defined
• Gather resource flow input data
• Energy
• Transport
• Materials
• Waste
• Apply conversion factors (physical ? footprint)
• Normalise results to match organisational
  objectives
• Ensure results can be translated into actions

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Time out personal footprints
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www.ecologicalfootprint.com
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4 Footprints of health centres

• BFF experience of working on hospitals and GP
  surgeries
• 2004 UKs entire National Health Service (NHS)
• 2007 LHSC South Street, University and
  Victoria Hospitals
• 2007 UK GP surgery
• Process and methodology followed is consistent
  with other types of studies (e.g. offices,
  hotels, police, transport companies, etc)

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UK National Health Service

• Mass Balance and EF of NHS in England and Wales
• Largest organisation in Europe (by employee
  number)
• Launched March 2004
• www.materialhealth.com

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NHS Footprint result

• 0.09 gha per patient episode
• (equivalent to 30m x 30m)

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NHS Products
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LHSC Three Hospitals
NHS1
0.079gha/episode
0.064gha/episode
1 Note, NHS results amended to enable comparison
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LSHC Materials Footprint 63 of total
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LSHC Utilities Footprint 31 of total
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Footprint for GP News
1/450 of an NHS episode
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4 Other case studies

• BFF has completed footprints of
• Organisations
• Corporate HQs, Government buildings, Land estates
• Products
• Food, furniture, electronics packaging
• Services
• Hotels, banking, transport, communications, IT
• Events
• Olympics 2012, Radiohead tour, conferences

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Office Footprints
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Ofcom vs Government Dept
Utilities 32 58 Business
travel 14 24 Commuting 19 7
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Benchmarking
client
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CO2 Breakdown of a South African Apple
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Carbon Footprint of Soft Drinks
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Office chair material big hitters
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PV solar panel
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Bottles vs. Cans
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Variable Production Efficiency
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Department of Communities and Local Government
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6 Future developments

• Footprinting has moved beyond indicative numbers
• Standards include ISO14064, GHG Reporting
  Protocol and (emerging) PAS 2050.
• Business community particularly expects standard
  approaches
• On-pack labels being promoted, and associated
  need for certification
• Application of shadow price of carbon further
  necessitates robustness in assessments
• Steady move of footprinting from voluntary
  initiative to regulated process

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Communication - are green claims a grey area?

• Increasing numbers of complaints to ASA 500
  increase in 2007
• Four issues ASA is grappling with
• Lifecycle boundaries
• Treatment of renewable energy
• Zero carbon and carbon neutral
• Promoting best in class of inherently
  unsustainable products

Source ASA, 2008
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Footprinter support tools

• Steady evolution of footprinting approaches
• Likely move from footprint services to
  products
• Recognised need for standard calculation
  frameworks
• BFF has developed Footprinter series for discrete
  sectors
• Enables organisations to calculate internally and
  benchmark against other sites

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Footprinter screenshots
www.footprinter.com
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7 What can you do?

• Footprinting is really an aggregating methodology
  for measuring resource efficiency (or
  eco-efficiency)
• Consider resource use within your organisation
• Look at energy, transport, materials used waste
• Collect a project team to work together and
  allocate responsibilities
• Gather data on resource use to enable
  performance-tracking and benchmarking
• Data collection activities highlight wider
  process efficiencies
• To calculate footprints is the next stepwhich
  totally relies on the resource use data

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What we would love to do!

• Tremendous opportunity for the industry to
  collaborate on developing a footprinting approach
• BFF can continue to work remotely to calculate
  footprints for discrete sites
• Ultimate aim to develop health footprinter for
  the sector which all sites can use for footprint
  calculations
• Facilitate the shift towards a lower carbon
  trajectory for the sector, without impacting on
  service

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Carbon as a commodity

• Pricing
• With a value per tonne, suddenly payback periods
  on projects become very different
• VER - 7/t (e.g. Gold Standard)
• CER - 20/t (CDM)
• EUA - 22/t (ETS)
• Defra - 26/t (shadow price)
• At 100/t carbon reductions become very cost
  positive
• Allowances
• Personal allowances on a credit card system
• Can trade excess allowances in the open market
• Practicality and political reality?

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Shifts in the economy

• Carbon currency could reduce environmental
  externalities of existing economy
• Potential for restructuring of transactions to
  explicit account for eco-efficiencies e.g.
  dematerialisation, eco-design, leasing,
  services-focus
• More fundamental changes local living, quality
  of life, reduced consumption

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Contact

• Simon Miller
• simon_at_bestfootforward.com
• www.bestfootforward.com
• www.footprinter.com