The document summarizes a workshop discussing greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting boundaries. It provides an overview of standards and protocols for setting organizational and project boundaries. Participants shared that while consistency is important, applying boundaries can be challenging due to various standards. Improving guidance, education, and collaboration between organizations may help standardize boundary setting practices over time. The group discussed ICARB's role in boundary setting should be providing guidance and information, rather than setting standards, to influence consistent GHG accounting.

1. ICARB – Boundaries Workshop
19-10-2011

2. • Operations Director at Ecometrica and co-founder
• Run GHG Assessment team and product development
• 9 years in GHG accounting
• Developed and ran GHG assessment team at ECCM until 2008
• Been involved in over 500 GHG assessments for organisations, products, events
and services.
• Worked for BP, BAT, BOC, S&N, AVIS, DHL, Mondi, Defra, RFA, Carbon Trust,
DECC, Scottish Gov’t and many others
• Advised on development of PAS2050 product labelling standard, the Carbon
Trust Standard and been on UK govt working groups for biofuel GHG accounting
Gary Davis

3. About Ecometrica
•Expert staff with more than 50 years GHG accounting experience
• Completed over 1000 GHG accounts
• Accredited Carbon Calculation Partner to the Carbon Disclosure Project
•Run www.emissionfactors.com for carbon professionals
•20 full time staff
• Offices in Edinburgh and Montreal
• For more information about Ecometrica please visit www.ecometrica.co.uk

4. Ecometrica’s Services:
Ecometrica offers its expertise on a consulting basis or through one of our software
platforms
Consulting
• Greenhouse Gas Accounting for organisations, products, events and projects
• Policy and Research for government and industry
• Land Use Impact and Ecosystem Services assessment and monitoring
Software as a service
• Our Impacts – CDP Accredited Greenhouse Gas Accounting platform
• Our Ecosystem – Advanced Web based spatial mapping tool for
environmental impacts
• www.emissionfactors.com

5. Factors Driving GHG Reporting:
• Regulatory compliance
• Mandates from buyers, e.g. Government, Tesco and Walmart
• Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – is now an energy tax
• Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) – mandated by investors
• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
• Shareholder/stakeholder demand.
• Investment due diligence.
• Carbon performance of investment portfolios.
• Increased pressure from customers and investors for companies to create a ‘greener’ public
image.
• UK Climate Change Act (Nov 2008) Government must make regulations under the Companies Act
2006 requiring companies to report their GHG emissions as part of their directors' reports by 6 April
2012 – under consultation

6. Proliferation of standards:
• Defra – Guidelines for Company Reporting on GHG Emissions*
• IPCC – Guidelines for National GHG Inventories*
• WBCSD/WRI – Greenhouse Gas Protocol*
• WBCSD/WRI – Greenhouse Gas Project Accounting Standard*
• WBCSD/WRI – Greenhouse Gas Scope 3 Accounting Standard*
• PAS 2050 – Assessing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services*
• The CarbonNeutral Protocol*
• The Carbon Trust Standard*
• Carbon Disclosure Project
• Carbon Reduction Commitment
• ISO 14064
• PAS 2060 - Specification for the demonstration of carbon neutrality
• The Climate Registry
• Western Climate Initiative (WCI) Cap and Trade Program , North America
• Bilan Carbone
• Global Reporting Initiative
• EU Emissions Trading Scheme
• Wal Mart Sustainability Questionnaire
• Voluntary Carbon Standard
• Clean Development Mechanism
• Pan Vivo*
*Ecometrica’s analysts
provided input to these
standards

7. ICARB – “Setting the Boundaries”:
Purpose of the working group is to establish what we mean by “setting the boundaries”
and advise ICARB how it can best facilitate “boundary setting”

8. ICARB – “Setting the Boundaries”:
Already convened an expert panel and received evidence form the following:
• Michael Gillenwater - Executive Director and Dean, Greenhouse Gas Management
Institute
• Pedro Faria - Technical Director of the Carbon Disclosure Project
• Daniel Hinze - Senior Economist and the Head of Environmental Analysis Unit in the
Scottish Government
• Amie Fulton – COSLA
• Jonathan Shopley - Director, International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA)
• Paul Adderley - Institute of Chartered Accountants
The aim of today will be to gather further evidence form the workgroup and feed it into
recommendations to ICARB

9. In this workshop we will discuss and answer:
• What do we mean by boundaries?
• Why are boundaries important?
• Are there international standards for setting boundaries?
• Are they being applied consistently?
• What can be done to improve boundary setting?
• What should ICARB’s role in boundary setting be?

10. What are we trying to measure?
• Organisations
• Reduction project
• Products
• Services
• Countries
• Buildings (lifetime)
• Events
• Transport (infrastructure)
• Energy generation
• Govt Policy
• Corporate policy
• Supply chain
• Cities

11. What do we mean by “setting the boundaries”?
• What are we measuring
• Which gases (CO2, Kyoto, other)
• Organisational
• Operational
• Control (Financial/Operational)
• Timeframe
• LCA approach - consequential, attributional
• Lifecycle boundaries (cradle to gate, cradle to customer, cradle to grave)
• Production vs consumption based (country)

12. Why are boundaries important?
• Consistency
• Comparability
• Sell the benefits to stakeholders
• Accuracy
• Transparency
• Relevance
• Completeness
• Engagement of stakeholders

13. Are there international standards for setting boundaries?
• Yes – see data kindly supplied by the Carbon Disclosure Project on which
standards/methods/protocols most commonly used. Data for 2010 reporting year.

14. Are they being applied consistently?
• Consistency important for comparability
• internal consistency for comparing within a company/product/project and over time
is well applied
• inter organisation more difficult due to number of different
standards/methods/protocols that exist

15. What can be done to improve boundary setting?
• Case Studies
• Guidance
• Sign Posting
• Marketing
• Education – Uni courses

16. What should ICARB’s role in boundary setting be?
• Not setting standards
• Influencing organisations/entities to account for GHG emissions
• Guidance on which standards to use for which purpose
• Information on how to tackle specific issues raised by the ICARB group
• Marketing of ICARB, its mission
• Funding or initiatives that further its goals
• Liaise with other bodies such as GHGMI, CDP, ICROA; they have offered to
collaborate