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PAS 2060

It is possible to achieved carbon neutrality under the guidelines of PAS 2060:2014. Southwest Environmental Limited can help your company become certified under this standard. In preparing your organisational GHG inventory for the purpose of carbon neutrality it will be required to adopt a traditional organisational boundary that includes  3 emission sources.

Scope for PAS 2060

The scope you choose in the run up for certification will affect the value of your certification considerably. By example at present we are working towards an 80% emissions reduction for the UK by 2050, the scope of this reduction under the Climate Change Act call for a reduction in domestic emissions. Now the UK has a massive non-domestic footprint, all of the products we export from china will not be counted. So to exclude "imported carbon" from the scope changes the whole game. It is similar with PAS 2060 by changing the scope you can undermine the "value" of you neutrality to virtually nothing.

Scope 1, 2 , 3 . . . . . . 42

Typically emissions are divided by "scope", which is to say they are grouped as services, goods and indirect (by example), which you might call scope 1, 2 and 3.

The scope 3 emissions you might include are those that has the greatest level of control over such as emissions arising from business travel and waste from operations. PAS 2060 recommends including all scope 3 emission sources that are technically feasible and cost effective to quantify.

Where an emission source has not been included in a subject boundary, the reasoning should be provided. This might include lack of data owing to language barriers.

Upstream & Down Stream

Items (scope categories) that you might include are typically divided in to up stream and down stream, for a bag of pasta swirls, and upstream scope item might be transport of grain from field to mill, and down stream item might be the cooking of the pasta by the consumer. Of course you might choose to exclude the cooking part as it is complicated, but that would reduce the effect of your neutrality. After all the easiest way to complete the PA 2060 inventory would be to exclude all scope items. . . .

PAS 2060 - Diminishing Returns

 So how do we choose our scope. The answer is to follow the rule of (the law of) diminishing returns. You can spend a certain amount on a broad scope but at some poinbt you will start to run in to obstacles. We elaborate here:

Your "Direct" Footprint

It is comparatively easy to work out your own direct footprint. You can look in the car park to see what cars are being driven, and check their odometers for millage. You can ask Boris in accounts how much electricity you have used in the last year . . . and so on. Soon you will start to have enough data satisfy tour scope for direct emissions.

Easy - Indirect Items

Some indirect emissions are very easy measure, take electricity and gas usage. An emissions factor is easily obtainable from the like of the Carbon Trust, or the Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE).

Difficult - Indirect Items

If you regularly buy items from a small company in Bangladesh, it is unlikely that you will be bale to easily communicate with them with regards to Carbon Foot printing, after all what is the incentive for them to undertake perhaps 40 hours of work carbon foot printing the product that they sell to you? It may be that you need to apply pressure through supply contract to ensure that they supply this data. But even when supplied they will have a chosen a scope, and is it representative?

This is where indirect emissions start to run in to a diminishing returns. You could perhaps spend the money you are using to investigate on carbon offsets instead for a better effect. . . . there can be a lot of work involved in calculating indirect emissions.

Quick Carbon Fact

A bicycle ride where the rider if burning calories from eating beef is more carbon intensive than the same journey made in a small efficient car.