April 2022
In this webinar you’ll learn how the Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (IO-LCA) method is used to calculate emission factors for corporate carbon footprints. Michael Burgess, Group Carbon & Environmental Performance Manager at Fletcher Building, joins our Technical Director Jeff Vickers to explain how the company uses these factors to manage their scope 3 carbon footprint and influence change.
Here is a sneak preview of the webinar:
What are Emission Factors?
- One of the best ways for companies to influence change is through their spending. Greenhouse gas or carbon footprint emission factors provide information about the quantity of emissions that are expected to be emitted from a good or service per dollar spent.
- To get a better idea of a person or organisation’s carbon footprint, they can break their spending into categories – be it a large investment decision, products in the supply chain, or supermarket shops – and then multiply the spend per category by the corresponding emission factor.
- thinkstep-anz’s new Emission Factors for New Zealand report lists emission factors for a wide range of locally purchased products and services. Also known as emission intensities, these values have been calculated using Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (IO-LCA) at the national level. They are reported in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per dollar (kg CO2e/$)
They can be used to:
- Get started with Scope 3 carbon footprints
- Calculating the carbon footprint of an investment portfolio
- By individuals trying to understand the carbon footprint of the things they buy.
They cannot be used to:
- Find out the carbon footprint of a specific product or service or compare to individual products. For example, they show the carbon footprint of seafood but not a specific brand or product.
How Fletcher Building used emission factors to influence change
- In 2019 Fletcher Building set science-based targets. These included reducing Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) emissions by 30 percent by 2030 from a financial year 2018 base year.
- The company also committed to reporting on their Scope 3 and that 67 percent of their suppliers would have a science-based target on their own by 2024.
- In FY 21 Fletcher Building worked with 48,000 suppliers: Too many to individually engage with. Therefore, materiality was critical.
- Most supplier emissions are estimated by looking at emissions per dollar spent. Previously Fletcher Building used DEFRA (UK) factor set. These were limited as they were developed for the UK market and not updated since 2011.
- thinkstep-anz’s emission factors significantly decrease the error for NZ-based spend data. Most categories are easily mapped from DEFRA.
- Estimating supplier emissions with the spend method, Fletcher Building found out that the top 67% of their supply chain emissions are made up from 180 vendors with the top 10 vendors accounting for 40% of total emissions.
- Fletcher Building is using this data to drive supply chain engagement.