Scopes, carbon accounting & LCA - what is it all about?

Author: Paul-Antoine Bontinck

The Rio Earth Summit, which took place just over 30 years ago, was a turning point in climate change becoming a mainstream topic, for government and businesses alike. It introduced the idea that, us humans, needed to stabilise our emissions of greenhouse gases, to reduce the risk of dramatically altering the climate of our planet. Following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, countries started accounting and reporting their greenhouse gas emissions.

These developments led to an increasing pressure for organisations to report their emissions as well. From that need came the development of a standardised framework, which could be used by public and private organisations to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The result was the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol), which launched in 2001. The newly minted carbon accounting standard introduced the concept of ‘scopes’. The aim was to help identify direct and indirect emission sources associated with the activities of organisations. Three scopes were defined:

Scope 1: all direct emissions, those that occur on site and can be managed by the reporting organisation.

Scope 2: represent emissions from producing the electricity consumed by the reporting organisation. It also includes things like district heating and cooling. But it does not include other aspects of those supply chain, like transporting electricity, extracting and refining fuels, etc.

Scope 3 is essentially everything else that occur in the supply chain of the reporting organisation. It covers what happens ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ of the organisation. Upstream relates to activities that happen earlier in the supply chain, for instance the production of a chemical used on-site. Conversely, downstream emissions represent things that happen later in the supply chain – an example might be the use of a product manufactured by the organisation. Have a look at the GHG Protocol’s Scope 3 Standard for more details.

One thing that is important to stress, I think, is that emission scopes and carbon accounting are somewhat separate from LCA thinking. They are just accounting mechanisms. The three scopes were defined with reporting in mind, and since their creation, they have become a common way for organisation to talk about their greenhouse gas emissions.

As LCA practitioners we can report results from an LCA using scopes, but it is only done when explicitly required by our client. We can also use our LCA know-how to develop detailed Scope 3 accounts for an organisation. But it is worth noting that life cycle assessment and carbon accounting are not one and the same. An LCA sets out to answer a question and is generally used to provide evidence to support decision-making. On the other hand, a carbon account is a way for organisation to transparently report on their effort to reduce their emissions over time.