What is CFAR and Carbon Accounting?
CFAR is Pro Enviro’s own Carbon Footprinting, Accounting, and Reporting software, which enables companies to quantify their Scope 1,2,3 emissions.
CFAR is Pro Enviro’s own Carbon Footprinting, Accounting, and Reporting software, which enables companies to quantify their Scope 1,2,3 emissions.
CFAR is Pro Enviro’s purpose-built Carbon Footprinting, Accounting, and Reporting software. It enables companies to quantify their Scopes 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions.
CFAR is a 100% web-based tool that can be viewed on any web browser, tablet, PC, or smartphone without the need to install or maintain additional software.
Carbon accounting, or greenhouse gas accounting, measures the number of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced directly and indirectly from a business’s or organisation’s activities within a set of boundaries.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. As a result, all other major GHGs are given a carbon dioxide equivalent or CO2e. This is determined by multiplying the amount of a GHG by its global warming potential (GWP).
A gas’s GWP measures how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of that gas absorbs over a given period relative to the emissions of 1 ton of carbon dioxide. The higher the GWP, the more that GHG contributes to global warming.
Carbon accounting allows organisations to quantify their greenhouse gas emissions, understand their climate impact and set goals to reduce their emissions.
The demand for robust greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting is rapidly growing as investors and businesses seek to demonstrate their commitment to decarbonisation; as of February 2023, 92% of global GDP (link resides outside ibm.com) has made an intended or actual commitment to reaching net zero by 2050.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is the most commonly used approach to calculate GHG emissions (link resides outside ibm.com). As defined by the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (link resides outside ibm.com), emissions are classified into three scopes.
Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from company-owned and controlled resources. In other words, they are emissions released to the atmosphere as a direct result of a set of activities at a company level.
Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of energy purchased by a utility provider. In other words, all GHG emissions are released into the atmosphere from the consumption of purchased electricity, steam, heat and cooling.
Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions – not included in scope 2 – that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions. In other words, emissions that are linked to the company’s operations
In line with the Government’s commitment to reduce the GHG emission of the UK by 68% by 2030 from the 1990 levels, many organisations are now eager to assess the carbon emission content of their operations and their value chain’s activities. These companies are now requesting that their operating sites, as well as their supply chain, understand the level of carbon emissions produced by their group activities and have targets in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout their value chain.
CFAR is easy to use and visually appealing, and it allows for simple and efficient footprinting, accounting, and reporting on carbon and GHG emissions. The detailed representations of your monthly carbon emissions provide a readily accessible carbon accounting and reporting data platform.
The web-based application allows companies to assess the largest source contributors to the site's carbon emissions and implement plans to reduce them through the development of net-zero carbon strategies.
CFAR is designed to readily provide the carbon and GHG information required in the latest government departments' and OEM companies' requests for tender and for the new Companies House annual reporting requirements—Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR).
Many regulatory bodies, including (notably) the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), mandate that management teams publicly disclose corporate emissions, climate risk impacts, and other ESG issues.
Analysts and management teams at public issuers must account for carbon emissions to remain compliant with these emerging regulations and avoid accusations of greenwashing. As a result, the financial services community (institutional asset managers, commercial banks, etc.) must also be able to make sense of these disclosures.
It can be challenging to accurately measure carbon accounting due to the complexity of tracking and quantifying emissions across various sources and activities within an organization. Additionally, various factors, such as evolving regulations, diverse emission scopes, and data collection inconsistencies, contribute to its difficulty.
The most common and primary distinction between GHG and carbon accounting lies in their scopes, specifically Scopes 1, 2, and 3.
While GHG (Greenhouse Gas) accounting encompasses all greenhouse gases, carbon accounting focuses only on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This differentiation allows a more precise assessment of an organization’s carbon footprint.
The carbon accounting strategy systematically collects, calculates, and reports an organisation’s carbon emissions. It typically includes defining emission scopes, establishing data collection procedures, selecting appropriate emission factors, and setting emission reduction targets aligned with environmental goals and regulatory requirements.
There are a number of frameworks used by corporations; some are industry-specific, while others are more general in nature.
The 4 most common frameworks used by corporations are: