- Tools to account for and reduce GHG emissions
- Measuring climatic and ecological performance
To reduce your CO2 emissions, you first need to take stock of them. This also means knowing how to assess emissions correctly, using a common method. In this sense, voluntary standards are invaluable tools.
Article 75 of the 2010 “Grenelle 2” law requires all companies with more than 500 employees and local authorities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to produce a greenhouse gas emissions report (BEGES) every four years, covering three scopes (scope 1: direct emissions; scope 2: associated emissions; scope 3: indirect emissions). ADEME provides an online resource center for assessing these emissions, based on the voluntary standard NF EN ISO 14064-1.
The ISO 14064 series of voluntary standards is essential for anyone who needs to calculate an emissions balance. Since they were first published in 2006, they have made it possible for everyone to quantify and verify greenhouse gas emissions in the same way. This is why countries, companies and local authorities that commit to reducing their emissions (for example, as part of the Paris Agreement of December 2015) do so with the assurance of speaking the same language: declaring direct or indirect emissions in CO2 equivalent refers to units and perimeters that are identical from one player to another.
Standards to build a carbon footprint
For example, the standard specifies the perimeter for emissions attributable to suppliers and subcontractors, packaging, employee travel, etc. So everyone speaks the same language. It also specifies the nature of the gases to be taken into account (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, etc.), and their conversion into tonnes of CO2 equivalent (teq CO2), the basic unit of carbon accounting. It also lists the activities to be retained, as well as the ratio between primary and final energy to be taken into account.
In the same spirit, the voluntary standard NF EN ISO 14067 takes up the fundamentals of ISO 14064, which it applies to ” quantifying the carbon footprint of a product” over its entire life cycle (LCA). This standard enables an organization to take appropriate measures to reduce the GHG emissions generated by the good or service under consideration. Knowing the carbon footprint of a product is useful for consumers to give them an idea of the consequences of their act of purchase in terms of its contribution to climate change. Affixed to the product, and expressed in grams of CO2 eq per 100 g, the label is accompanied by a rating ranging from A+ to E, in the same simplified approach as Nutriscore or the “Impact Environnement” ecological label.
C02 emissions: how to adapt to climate change
A low-carbon strategy also requires a policy of offsetting incompressible emissions, i.e. those over which the organization has no control. This involves financing projects to reduce other CO2 emissions elsewhere, or programs to sequester carbon in soils or biomass, in line with a biodiversity strategy.
Last but not least, the adoption of robust plans makes it possible to limit, as far as possible, the damage caused by extreme weather events that are already a consequence of climate change: floods, droughts, hurricanes, rising sea levels, damage to biodiversity… Here too, companies and local authorities of all sizes have a voluntary standard to help them learn to anticipate without delay, NF EN ISO 14090.
Buy the NF EN ISO 14064-1 standard
