Australian third party certification body NCS International (NCSI) has concluded that companies are struggling with efficient levels of disclosure of their carbon footprints after it found recent results of reviews and regular audits to be inconsistent.
Nav Brah, NCSI?s environment and sustainability manager, said that many businesses found the challenge of preparing a greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy inventory overwhelming. ISO 14064 is the internationally accepted GHG protocol for preparing carbon inventories.
According to Nav Brah, every disclosure in carbon footprint accounting should meet five key areas to create credible reports:
1. Relevance. The GHG inventory must be reflective of the company?s GHG.
2. Completeness. GHG emission sources and activities must be accounted for.
3. Consistency. Consistent methodologies must be used to allow meaningful comparisons of emissions over time.
4. Transparency. All relevant decisions, issues and data must be addressed in a factual, coherent manner.
5. Accuracy. Users must make decisions about the integrity of the reported information with reasonable assurance.
?Carbon and energy accounting requires a systematic, methodical approach to acquiring relevant energy data, processing and manipulating this data, quantifying and reporting GHG emissions,? Mr Brah said.
He added that a company?s awareness of its carbon footprint was vital in improving efficiency, reducing energy wastage and saving money. ?Information is knowledge,? he said. ?Implementing a robust carbon and energy inventory system allows companies to identify energy wastage and realise opportunities to improve energy efficiency.?
Source: NCS International