BUSINESS STANDARDS
is the quarterly magazine of BSI Group, highlighting the vital role that standards play in today's business environment. Regular features include interviews with leading business figures, as well as news on the latest developments in management systems and standards.
Tracking your carbon footprint
29 May 2008
Topics: Carbon footprint, CFV, GHG, Environment, Carbon market
BSI Management Systems has launched a Carbon Footprint Verification (CFV) scheme in the UK for businesses seeking to verify their carbon footprint. The process of measuring, calculating and declaring your organization's direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) - your "carbon footprint" - requires an effective measurement and management system, but these are lacking in the marketplace.
Nonetheless, organizations have already begun voluntarily declaring their GHG emissions for reasons such as risk management, cost reduction, brand protection, and attracting socially responsible investment. Presenting an accurate carbon footprint is an important step to manage and reduce the impact of an organization's activities on climate change, but the tools to achieve this remain out of reach for many businesses.
The new BSI scheme includes training courses on best practice approaches to footprinting, to help organizations start on the right foot.
Verifying a carbon footprint is important to ensure it is robust enough to be declared, and to demonstrate an organization's positive approach to climate change.
BSI's CFV scheme is relevant to all types of organizations, including those reporting GHG emissions for mandatory schemes or that want to widen the scope to cover the whole organization, as well as those in industries that are due to be drawn into a mandatory GHG emissions scheme.
CFV reassures regulators, customers, employees, shareholders, potential investors, environmental groups, the media and even your competitors, of the integrity, completeness and transparency of the calculations. Any organization that is measuring or is establishing procedures to measure its carbon footprint could benefit from the CFV process.
BSI can verify carbon footprints in accordance with ISO 14065 and against the requirements of ISO 14064-1, as well as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development/World Resources Institute (WBCSD/WRI) GHG protocol.
For more information: www.bsigroup.com/may08cfv
Business Standards © 2007. Editorial produced by Caspian Publishing in association with the British Standards Institution. Editorial opinions expressed on are not necessarily those of BSI Group or Caspian Publishing. Neither Caspian Publishing nor BSI Group accept responsibility for advertising or editorial content, nor for that appearing on linked third-party websites. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden without written permission from BSI Group or Caspian Publishing.
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Question: Do companies need to verify their carbon footprint?
Unless a business is regulated by some form of greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting and/or cap-and-trade regulation (as is the case for some 12,000 installations in Europe), rarely is there the need to either calculate or verify the accuracy of a carbon footprint.
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