The beginning of the year is a busy time for companies, as annual and sustainability reports must be completed. Carbon footprint calculations require a lot of work, as data must be collected from different systems and up-to-date emission factors must be found. Could automating carbon footprint calculations save time and effort in your company as well?
How is carbon footprint traditionally calculated?
In most companies, carbon footprint calculations are done manually. Typically, the calculation is performed in Excel, where source data is collected from different systems and different people. Excel is a good tool if the calculation formulas are correct and there are sufficient resources available for manual data collection.
Carbon footprint calculation in itself is simple addition and multiplication. The difficult part is defining the correct scope for the calculation and collecting reliable source data. Emission calculation standards, such as the GHG Protocol and ISO 14067, help to ensure reliable calculations.
The calculation requires operational data (e.g., energy consumption, material purchases, and transport distances) as well as emission factors that indicate the amount of emissions (kg CO2e) per unit under consideration (e.g., kWh, kg, or km).
Operational data is typically collected from various systems used by the company, such as enterprise resource planning, energy management, and travel expense systems. Even small and medium-sized enterprises have several of these systems. The larger the company or corporation, the more systems are in use and the more complex it becomes to collect data.
Emission factors can be sourced from reliable databases such as OpenCO2 or ecoinvent. However, many companies continue to search for emission factors using Google, and some even resort to AI. Emission factors found in expert-validated databases are significantly more reliable than those found randomly online. Factors obtained by Googling or asking AI can be outdated, and their reliability cannot be guaranteed.
Traditionally, emission factors are updated every year either manually or by purchasing consulting services for updating emission factors or Excel calculators.
How can carbon footprint calculation be automated?
Data collection is the most labor-intensive part of emissions accounting. Several comprehensive responsibility systems that promise to automate responsibility work have recently entered the market. In order to successfully automate emissions calculations – and ensure that the results are reliable – automation must be implemented carefully. It is important to remember that automation does not happen by itself. It requires careful specification and validation of the source data. With a better understanding of the automation process, the implementer is more likely to achieve better results.
Steps towards automating carbon footprint calculations
The automation of carbon footprint calculation should be implemented in stages:
- Defining objectives – company-level or product-level calculation?
- Scope of calculation – which activities and emission categories are taken into account?
- Mapping activity data – from which systems is the data retrieved?
- Mapping emission factors – up-to-date factors for each activity data
- Test calculation – e.g., with a carbon footprint calculator or in Excel
- Defining the automation project
- Implementing the automation project
- Testing – comparing the results with the test calculation
Automating carbon footprint calculations is therefore not something that happens automatically. It requires a systematic approach and sufficient resources.
Who is the automation of carbon footprint calculation suitable for?
Carbon footprint calculation should be automated, especially if the company reports in accordance with the CSRD or if voluntary initiatives such as SBTi or CDP require annual emissions calculations. Customers or competitive bidding may also require frequently updated carbon footprint data.
The best conditions for automating carbon footprint calculations are found in companies that have already calculated their own or their products’ emissions several times. Such companies have a clear understanding of their most significant emission sources, the systems providing the input data, and the assumptions that need to be made. In addition, these companies understand what can and should be automated.
Automation is worth implementing for tasks that can be standardized and are repeated regularly.
Practical implementation of automating of carbon footprint calculations
Automating carbon footprint calculations requires not only expertise in sustainability, but also the involvement of the finance and IT teams. Therefore, the project must be planned and phased carefully to ensure that all experts have enough time and resources to implement it.
It is advisable to proceed with automation in stages. For example, starting with the automation of scope 1 & 2 calculations may be a good place to start, as it requires relatively little initial data. However, we do not recommend automating emissions calculations based purely on euro data, as the reliability of spend-based emission factors is not at the same level as emission factors based on quantity data (kWh, kg, number of items, etc.).
One effective solution is to automate the updating of emission factors used in emission calculators, as Messeforum and NK Tekniikka have already done.
Automating emissions calculations works best if the company uses an ERP system to which emission factors can be linked. Svante Suominen from Avoin.Systems explains in his blog (in Finnish) how CO2 management can be brought alongside euro management using an ERP system. In our next blog post, we will explain what kind of emission factor data should be used in an ERP system.
OpenCO2net helps automate your emissions calculations
The OpenCO2 emissions database contains almost 8,000 emission factors validated by experts. The OpenCO2 API enables automatic updates of emission factors to company systems or Excel calculators. By utilizing the interface solution, emission factors remain up to date and searching for emission factors no longer takes time.
OpenCO2net Oy helps you select the right emission factors for each activity. If necessary, we can also provide expert services for the planning and management of automation projects.
