Emissions Intensity Metrics
Calculate emissions per unit of relevant activity drivers
What Are Emissions Intensity Metrics?
Emissions Intensity Metrics are a measure of emissions per some quantity of activity. Typically these are emissions per dollar of operating revenue, emissions per product sold, or emissions per FTE.
Why Are Emissions Intensity Metrics Useful?
Emissions Intensity Metrics are a useful way for companies to track their emissions over time. If your company doubles in size, your emissions will likely double as well (or close to it) regardless of the good things you do to reduce emissions. However, if you calculate an Emissions Intensity Metric as your total emissions per dollar of revenue, as both of those things increase, your Emissions intensity Metric will stay the same or potentially decline and reflect your emission reduction efforts. The concept is similar to financial accounting ratios that are used to measure the efficiency and profitability of a company based on its financial reports.
Emissions Intensity Metrics can also be used by other companies as a primary emissions factor for goods and services purchased from you (this is the ideal number your customers want to know with supplier engagement or portfolio engagement surveys!)
Emissions Intensity Metrics can also be a great way to compare your companies performance with that of other companies or with the industry as a whole. It’s very difficult to find a company of the same size producing the same things to get a direct comparison using total emissions, but because Emissions Intensity Metrics scale with the size of the company, it can allow much broader comparisons.
What Emissions Intensity Metrics Should You Calculate?
As a minimum, it can be helpful to calculate an Emissions Intensity Metric per dollar of operating revenue, as this can be used for all of the purposes list above. It’s also universally comparable, as every company earns revenue regardless of what they produce.
It would then be more accurate and more informative to calculate emissions per quantity of items produced, but you may need to consider some activity based costing methods to ensure emissions are appropriately apportioned between the goods or services you sell.
How To Calculate Emissions Intensity Metrics In Sumday?
To calculate Emissions Intensity Metrics:
- Navigate to the Intensity Metrics screen in the Assessments section
- Select a Unit of Measure you’d like to use for the intensity metric (dollars, kg, each, km, person/FTE etc).
- For the Input field, search for the particular product or service you’d like to use to represent the activity associated with the metric i.e. What do you sell? If your product or service is not in the list, you can reach out to support@sumday.io to discuss.
- Select the appropriate emissions boundaries for your emissions assessment. For example, if you've only assessed Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 Upstream emissions, tick only these three boxes.
- A table will appear to enter the quantity for your chosen Unit of Measure e.g. kgs of Coffee beans sold, number of electronic goods sold. Enter values where applicable - if you have this data on a monthly basis you will be able to track the movement of the intensity metric throughout the assessment period.
Last updated on September 4, 2024