Verification & Transparency
Transparency sits at the very core of the work we do.
Whether you're here on behalf of your business, as an employee, or an individual on a Furthr subscription, please see below the various different ways in which we ensure integrity in the work we do.
Our Methodologies & Verification Processes: Explained
Emissions Measurement
Noun
Quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions of a business, service, product or person
Standards We Work Under
Data Sources We Use
We use emissions conversion factors from governmental, academic and environmental agency datasets.
For general business operations, these include but are not limited to:
-
IPCC
-
UK - Defra
-
USA - EPA
-
Australian government
-
New Zealand government
-
Canadian government
-
AIB – European electricity intensities
-
EEA
-
Ademe – France
-
Ember
-
Ecoinvent
For countries or regions for which there are no average grid emissions factors available, we generate carbon intensities using local fuel mixes. For example, to add an electricity grid factor for UAE, we collected fuel mix data from each provider of electricity to the region, and applied these to intensities from each source fuel to generate an average for the grid.
For Embodied Carbon and Lifecycle Analyses, we use the following:
-
Multiple peer-reviewed meta-analyses, and for more obscure activities and products single peer-reviewed studies (added to as more studies are published) in environmental and scientific globally recognised publications (downloaded from ResearchGate to which Emma Littlewood, Strategy Director of Green Element Group, is a contributor) or Science Direct and other sources. These are analysed by Emma’s climate analyst team.
-
Client or supplier-specific LCA studies were requested by our clients and approved by our team
-
The Australian National Life Cycle Assessment Society AusLCI
-
Tool for constructing LCAs Ccalc2
-
ICE construction dataset from Bath University
-
EEWIOD: where only expenditure data is available and used as a proxy for activity
-
CDP: supplier-specific self-reported intensities e.g. for hauliers, as agreed upon with our clients
-
Canadian Raw Materials Database
-
EcoInvent – ad hoc intensity metrics to supplement other datasets
Methodologies We Use
We use a range of GHG Protocol-approved methodologies to make the jump from business input data to credible emissions measurement.
Wherever feasible, we use methodologies that take Primary Business Activity data as an input (e.g Kg, kWh, time spent, km travelled). Sometimes, this data is simply not available, in which case we will use Secondary Data (e.g. industry average data else expenditure conversion data). Crucially: in any case where we use Secondary Data, we make it clear how exactly we're able to get 'closer to the emissions' in future years.
