Learn the Foundations of Carbon Accounting

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:  

• Explain the basic Greenhouse Gas (GHG) accounting principles.
  
• Describe the different objects that work to create a carbon accounting framework.
  

Before We Start

If you completed the Net Zero Cloud Basics module, then you already know how Northern Trail Outfitters uses Net Zero Cloud to support and scope their climate strategy. Not to mention Configure a Net Zero Cloud Org project which details how an admin can set up and configure the application. If you haven’t completed these modules, we recommend taking them to have more context as you dive into carbon accounting.

Account for Your Actions

The world is in a climate crisis and the need to reduce carbon emissions has never been more urgent. Regulators, investors, and customers are urging companies to get to net zero faster. Companies are faced with the challenge of tracking the complete spectrum of their value chain emissions, which can be a complex and cumbersome process. In this module, we’ll look at how Net Zero Cloud can help you meet that challenge. 

Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) is using Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud to collect, analyze, and report energy usage data and track their carbon footprint. As a part of its net zero commitment, NTO plans to track its carbon footprint and set long-term goals to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

How Net Zero Cloud Can Help

Today, companies are generally expected to gather data on their emissions-producing activities, calculate, and report their contribution to atmospheric emissions, and reduce emissions across all three scopes. Check out this help topic to see examples of how emissions are qualified as scope 1, 2, and 3. Net Zero Cloud makes this entire carbon accounting process easy and streamlined for a company like NTO. Net Zero Cloud provides the tools to quantify and measure carbon emissions, and helps companies make informed decisions about which mitigation strategies will be most effective.

In Net Zero Cloud, all emissions are converted to their carbon dioxide equivalents and are reported in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e). Wondering what tCO₂e means? tCO₂e is a standardized unit for counting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, regardless of whether they're from carbon dioxide or another gas, such as methane, nitrous oxide, or one of the dozens of refrigerants used throughout the world today.

Net Zero Cloud helps companies create an annual emissions inventory. A GHG inventory is the basis for efforts to reduce emissions and their associated environmental impacts. Once you know what your emissions are, it’s easier to tackle the process of reducing the impact of these emissions. An accurate GHG inventory also helps companies forecast emissions in future years.

Calculating GHG emissions also enables companies like NTO to set science-based emissions reduction targets. An accurate GHG inventory is the required starting point for determining which targets should be set and for determining how to quantify these targets.

Let’s follow along as Sam Rajan, the Chief Sustainability Officer at NTO, explores carbon accounting using Net Zero Cloud for all stationary and vehicle asset sources.

Explore the Building Blocks of Carbon Accounting

There are four key building blocks in Net Zero Cloud that help users manage the carbon accounting process.

• Emissions Sources: Emissions sources represent the assets of an enterprise that generate carbon emissions. The three types of emissions sources in Net Zero Cloud are:
  

• Stationary Asset Environmental Sources: Assets that are stationary in nature, such as office buildings, data centers, or warehouses.
  
• Vehicle Asset Emissions Sources: Assets that are mobile in nature, such as company vehicles or private jets.
  
• Scope 3 Emissions Sources: Scope 3 activities that are the source of emissions, such as transportation, purchase of raw materials, hotel stays, and so on. This category of emissions results from the activities of the company that are from sources not owned or controlled by the company.
  

• Energy Use Records: Energy use records are created for a specific date or date range and are associated with an emissions source. Examples include monthly electricity consumption for a stationary asset or a single commercial flight record. Users can enter energy consumption information, such as the quantity of electricity, diesel, or natural gas consumed, over a specific period of time in various units of measure that are specific to the activity or fuel being consumed. Based on the emissions factors referenced by the energy use record, Net Zero Cloud does the work for you by converting the entered consumption into carbon emissions.
  
• Emissions Factors: Emissions factors are used to convert energy consumption into GHG emissions. Several emissions factors in the form of reference datasets from standard government or private sources are preconfigured in Net Zero Cloud. Examples include the eGRID dataset for electricity subgrid emissions in the United States and the EEIO datasets that estimate tCO2e per monetary output across most of the 8 upstream scope 3 categories. Emissions factors specific to a region, business sector, or country can also be added to Net Zero Cloud.
  
• Carbon Footprints: A carbon footprint is an estimate of the amount of CO2e released to the environment during the lifecycle of a product or an activity. Carbon footprints primarily exist to summarize values from multiple energy use records. There are three types of carbon footprints in Net Zero Cloud, corresponding to the three types of emissions sources.
  

• Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint: Contains overall emissions by scope, summarized from underlying energy uses for a stationary asset across all fuel types. Net Zero Cloud automatically creates Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint Item records to show summarized emissions information for a single fuel type.
  
• Vehicle Asset Carbon Footprint: Contains overall emissions by scope, summarized from underlying energy uses for a vehicular asset.
  
• Scope 3 Carbon Footprint: Contains overall emissions from underlying energy uses for a scope 3 activity. While you can associate a Scope 3 Emissions Source to the carbon footprint record, you can also associate a stationary source. For example, a warehouse can be the epicenter of scope 3 activities such as purchase of goods and services, transportation and distribution, and waste generation. You can associate the required energy use records and procurement summary records to determine from which activities you want to calculate emissions.
  

Now that Sam understands the building blocks for carbon accounting, he maps out the connections between these objects.

To understand the relationship between emissions sources, energy uses, and carbon footprints for scope 3 activities, check out Carbon Accounting for Scope 3 with Net Zero Cloud.

In the next unit, we focus on stationary asset sources and stationary asset energy uses.

Resources

• Trailhead: Strategies for Net Zero Now: Quick Look
• Trailhead: Net Zero Cloud Basics
• Salesforce Help: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Developer Guide: Net Zero Cloud Data Model