In this episode, Andrew Griffiths, co-founder of the Carbon Accounting Alliance, sheds light on the Alliance’s mission to tackle sustainability challenges through collaboration. Backed by over 100 organisations and businesses, including Green Element and Compare Your Footprint, Andrew explains the Alliance's focus on promoting best practices and robust standards.

Interested businesses can easily join the Carbon Accounting Alliance by filling out a quick form. The process is open and accessible, aiming to create a supportive community without any current costs involved.

Highlights:

Carbon Accounting 101:

·     Andrew simplifies carbon accounting, likening it to financial accounting – but with carbon instead of money! He explains the process of measuring carbon, the significance of carbon factors, and provides insights into achieving net-zero.

·     Andrew discusses the Alliance’s primary objectives including policy alignment, standards, technical coherence, and communications to drive positive change.

·     As of last month, the Carbon Accounting Alliance had measured a staggering 587,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and reported 6,000,000 tonnes of reductions.

Challenges and Solutions for Carbon Accounting:

• Andrew delves into data collection as a barrier for organisations looking to manage their carbon footprint. He discusses governmental policy recommendations and initiatives like Project Perseus for seamless and automated data gathering.
• The UK government has shown genuine interest in the Alliance’s proposals, signalling a potential bridge between business-led action and policy change.
• The Carbon Accounting Alliance plans to streamline data collection, analysis, and assurance using technologies like open banking but for carbon data.

Collaboration is Key:

• Andrew drives home the importance of collaboration in the industry and creating a safe space for professionals to connect, collaborate, and share experiences openly.
• For the Carbon Accounting Alliance, success in the next 12 months relies on collaboration, influencing policy makers, and engaging with standards like ISO and net-zero guidelines to drive change.

This episode of Sustainability Solved is sponsored by Business Declares, a not-for-profit business network who inspire, encourage, and accelerate action within businesses to address the climate, ecological, and social emergency. 

They are an active network of 100+ businesses who back our commitments to reach net-zero, restore and protect nature, and advocate for regulatory change. 

Join Business Declares as a member to get help accelerating your action on net-zero targets and on nature targets for your business from the network. Find out more here: Business Declares 

Mentioned in this episode:

Climate Transition that Works

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[00:00:21] And I'm Charlie Luxton, a designer who focuses on sustainable architecture. In this episode, Andrew Griffiths joins us to talk about the launch of the Carbon Accounting Alliance. A project which launched last month and aims to collaborate on solving sustainability challenges. It's supported by over 30 organizations and businesses, including Green Element and Compare Your Footprint.

[00:01:03] If you hear someone like me talk about carbon, what I really mean. is all of the greenhouse gases. So methane, nitrous oxides, all of the greenhouse gases that sort of cause this warming effect that is causing climate change. Um, and so carbon accounting is sort of the profession by which we are measuring carbon emissions for organizations, for products, for construction projects, all of those sorts of things.

[00:02:10] And we went, wait, are we talking to our sector, other carbon accounting bodies? No. Should we be? Probably. Um, and so, um, you know, we, we realized that we really should walk the walk on, you know, industry collaboration and that we didn't really have a forum or a space where we could come together to kind of discuss challenges, opportunities, issues that were affecting our industry.

[00:02:55] And then it has just ballooned since then. And in. in the [00:03:00] last two days. We, we, you know, we launched two days ago. It was 37 organizations, what we started with. As of this morning, we're at 108.

[00:03:36] We represented around 24, 000, well, more than 24, 000 carbon. A company called Footprints. But as of right now, we collectively represent more than 40, 000 company called Footprints. Extraordinary. Extraordinary. We've been overwhelmed. If you could achieve one thing, other than global domination by the sounds of it, if you could achieve one thing, what are you hoping [00:04:00] to get by this new form, this new structure?

[00:04:22] And we came up with a list of things we could do together. And then we asked people to vote on them, to prioritize them. And so, um, the four sort of things are sort of policy and legislation. Standards, technical alignments and communications. And so on the, on the policy and legislation front, you know, we are seeking alignment on some policy ask where particularly if we, we see all the, all the everyday, we see barriers to measurement that could be addressed by policy.

[00:05:14] And it helps with this sort of drive to try and Bring energy efficiency and all those sorts of things. And there are precedents for that, by the way. So France has a law, which means that any property over a thousand square meters must report their energy consumption on an annual basis in the public domain.

[00:05:49] Problems with it? So like the new forest land and agricultural emissions sort of standards that come out from the G. H. G. Protocol and from science based targets initiative. [00:06:00] We've been able to have discussions about those. We've gone through what would Are you finding that's a problem as well? Are you finding that's a problem?

[00:06:24] It's, it's, you know, we, we take, um, a piece of a data point, like the kilowatt hours of energy that you've used in a month. And we multiply that by a carbon factor, which is sort of a proxy thing where it says one kilowatt hour of energy equals X tons of carbon. And that's how you're sort of your missions sort of calculated across all of those different kind of data points.

[00:07:03] And then the final one communications is really about, um, you know, alignment on terms that should and shouldn't be used. So discussing and debating use of claims. So we've been having some debates about the use of the term carbon neutral, for example, that have been really. sort of interesting and insightful where we found that the majority, this was back when we were 37 organizations, we found that the majority of the Alliance either had never verified people as carbon neutral or had stopped.

[00:07:51] Oh, what's, what's your definition of that? No, I think it's really important because people listening will pick up. Yes, absolutely. So, um, there's, [00:08:00] there's, there's, there's, there's a challenge in, in, in definitions where people are still getting used to when, when I talk about net zero, I'm referring to the science based targets, uh, corporate net zero standard, which basically means that organizations, uh, have to set a baseline year and then They have to reduce at least 90 percent or more of their emissions.

[00:08:42] It's just that the very simple sort of seesaw that we're trying to address is that emissions are way too high. So nature just cares about two questions. Are we emitting more or are we emitting less? And are we sequestering and storing more carbon or less? And currently the scales are [00:09:00] so far skewed that if we don't Substantially reduce our emissions.

[00:09:28] Definitely. So, um, scope one is the fuel that you burn. It's your direct emission. So, uh, for most organizations that is oil or gas heating system and vehicle fleets. If you have any petrol or diesel cars, if you're directly burning the fuel, that's your scope one emission that doesn't include electricity, right?

[00:10:07] Yeah, exactly. Scope two is the energy that you use. And so, because you, you know, if you're Sourcing energy from on the grid or from elsewhere, you're not the one burning the fuel to create the energy, but you are the one consuming the energy and you have a lot of control over the amount of energy that you consume.

[00:10:42] So things like waste, you can usually get to quite quickly and easily. Water, sort of fall into it. You've got transfer and distribution energy. Franchises are relatively easy to measure because it's sort of this getting business travels another easy one. Yeah, absolutely. You're measuring it for financial purposes.

[00:11:20] Yeah, especially because I come from the architecture background, you know, that that's everything, you know, what we ask people to build is. You know, everything that we admit, I mean, vast, vast amounts, unfortunately, and we can do everything we can, but, but it's sort of outside of our immediate control apart from specification, which is sort of the challenge for many of us, I suppose, supply chain.

[00:12:04] What influence do they have through their advice? And what influence can they have to help reduce emissions through giving good advice? Not just when someone's asking the question, what can I do about sustainability? But actually I'm thinking of buying or selling this capital assets, you know, going, have you thought about the.

[00:12:42] I mean, from our perspective, we've been doing carbon modeling on buildings and actually really has. changed a lot about thinking quite rapidly. And is that what you're finding within the organizations that you work with? And we'll, I mean, this is actually a question to you to make, because I mean, this is what you do all day, every day.

[00:13:25] But a hand, you know, about a little over half of the 37 that we originally had responded to a survey we did asking, what's the total amount of emissions you've measured? And what's the total amount of reductions that you've measured? Not offsets. actual reductions. And so we know that the alliance so far, at least, and it will be way bigger than this now, has measured more than 587 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and have measured more than 6 million tons.

[00:14:20] And so we have to be helpful to do that. Last year, 99 percent success rate. 99 percent of our members succeed in reducing their footprint. On average, they reduce their absolute carbon footprint by 11 percent year on year and 14 percent per employee. We measured over 300, 000 tons of carbon emission reductions.

[00:15:12] And we go, what would it have been? What was it? What was the reduction that was achieved in this construction project through using sustainable principles? You touched upon, you know, you want legislation to mandate landlords to give the data to their tenants. In my experience, in our experience, it is really hard to get data.

[00:16:02] So actually it's business that's driving most of this change. And considering the UK is I think 90, 99 percent SMEs. Is that right? Yeah. Roughly that. Let's, let's not get hooked on the figures. So therefore it's actually 99 percent of. Businesses in the UK are going to struggle to get hold of data and understand if they can get hold of the data, how to manipulate it.

[00:16:49] making it so that our systems evolve to a point where they can talk to each other. Um, and then the third is, is automation of data gathering, which I'll sort of come on to, [00:17:00] um, in a second on the policy front. The good news there is that actually, although, although we've only just officially, officially launched.

[00:17:32] policy development in the UK. Uh, we sent them a letter and they invited us in for a meeting with, uh, we were very pleasantly surprised at the sheer numbers of directors and heads off that we had in the room. It was sort of, they, they brought sort of every sort of major sort of person from different departments in seemingly, including the deputy director of net zero who, who heads up net zero policy.

[00:18:17] they are also exploring particularly that recommendation because a there's precedent. We, we see it's happening in France and B that I think they see that it could have a, uh, you know, a very positive impact on something that's quite frustrating for a lot of businesses at the moment. So that the policy angle, I, I do actually hold some.

[00:18:57] And very simply, these, these are the same people. [00:19:00] Icebreaker1 are the same people who developed the Open Banking Standard. The one that means that you can go on to QuickBooks or Xero, click a button saying, I would like to connect my bank account, and it just does it. It just, it just, everything comes through, and it does it the same way, no matter what bank you're with.

[00:19:41] And the idea is. That, that what we're working towards doing here is that we're working with the, um, and this is UK government backed by the way, they've, they've got ministerial backing to drive this and they've got all of the big banks are involved. There's a lot of different players and essentially what we do is, you know, [00:20:00] a.

[00:20:28] Because currently, certainly most of us are calculating. Energy emissions based on, okay, you use that much in a month and the average grid intensity was that therefore this, this would be 30 minute interval data. With the grid intensity measures of that time and location paired with the data coming through.

[00:21:21] And the only way they can prove that is to have data that is assurable, that shows we gave them a loan to help them with their insulation and or. You know, installing solar panels or whatever it might be. And we've seen that their energy consumption has gone from that to that in the, in the emissions that, that sort of have happened.

[00:22:02] It might go to business travel next It's sort of what makes most sense for automating So fundamentally the upside that we're saying is that despite recent rhetoric that there is genuine interest in the government for this issue Yes, it's, I, I, yeah, for sure, um, I, you know, I had, I did a roundtable with, um, Chris Skidmore, uh, the MP who did the net zero review in parliament, uh, last week.

[00:22:48] And so it's gonna, next year's gonna be critical because, you know, election year, we need, you know, we need to see that if anyone chooses to run on the ticket of weakening environmental and you know, climate [00:23:00] legislation. We need to, as a society, demonstrate that you, that's not how you win elections. Um, yeah, I've, I've, there are definitely, there are, especially within the civil service, I can, I can wholeheartedly attest that there are really good people with their hearts in the right place, pushing for all of the right things.

[00:23:36] Um, what would, what would, uh, what would you like to achieve in the next 12 months? And, and you know, five years, let's say, have you got sort of headline ambitions? Um, to a certain extent, this is, this is definitely going to need to evolve and because one of the key things, key principles underlying this is that, um, you know, although, you know, Amelia and I started it, we are not planning to be dictators determining what everyone should be doing.

[00:24:34] That starts to become unmanageable very quickly. So we'll need to start thinking about structures to put in place that enable, because the, the, the magic of this thing, the, what the thing that people have enjoyed already sort of said that they just love is being able to be in a space with other people who know.

[00:25:13] quite rapidly scaling organizations. So I hope that we can create a sort of a sort of a unified feeling of common purpose, I think is the fundamental, because that every success of everything else will come from that. If we feel that we've got a unified purpose, unified vision, and that that collaboration over competition sort of concept really rings through for us, where we all acknowledge, you know, Planet Mark could not measure every UK tomorrow.

[00:26:01] And then I think success over the next 12 months will be, you know, working with policymakers to try and a make it really clear that, uh, you know, what industry needs and building a business case behind it. So helping them understand what could be unlocked through doing certain things will be critical and the risks of not.

[00:26:44] It's if we can nudge best practice, even slightly in a standard that gets set, the impact is huge because it ripples out globally or certainly nationally. Um, as they've seen like the isolates or guidelines, it would be global. So really driving for nudging best practice [00:27:00] on both standards and policy. Um, having that safe space for, you know, candid conversations about what we should and should not do.

[00:27:49] And I think we're gonna have to get to that stage as an industry as well over a, you know, a transitionary period where we get get up to speed with that. But professionalization will be key. And yes, I [00:28:00] think there's a whole array of things we can can achieve, but really driving forward our sector and influencing policy and standards and advocating for green skills.

[00:28:34] Whereas if you recruit someone who's got their chartership of financial accounting, you can be confident they know. Quite a lot of what to do. We need to get there as well so that we're not constantly having to have this huge onboarding sort of task and start being able to sort of have some form of qualification that tells us, yes, this is a qualified person who can do the job.

[00:29:11] If you're trying to get the, you know, the a star, you know, the a plus rating and the bells and whistles, but actually you sometimes go, no, I'm not going to do that because I don't think that's the right thing. And the fact that you're creating an organization with enough people. To have the heft to shift quickly, the, the, the, the kind of the game rules, I think is really critical because it does feel a bit like the wild west, but you know, with a lot of people trying to do the very best they can, but it is slightly unregulated, isn't it?

[00:29:58] I think people, uh, you know, [00:30:00] this won't necessarily be universally true, but I think most the vast, vast, vast majority of people who have gotten into particularly carbon accounting are in it because they are passionate about it. They, they, they, they know that we have a challenge that needs to be solved.

[00:30:34] But yeah, so I do think that there's a strong drive for collaboration. Um, in our sector and certainly that is, it shines through, I know, I'm reading the applications and just people voluntarily leave comments going this is amazing, I've been wanting to find ways to talk to Other people in my sector for ages.

[00:31:03] insane, huge response is that clearly this has been a gap. It's been a space that people have kind of wanted and that it's just that no one had kind of gotten around to doing yet. I think you're absolutely spot on with regards to the nature of the person that gets involved with carbon accounting and in this space, but equally the market and stroke industry is incredibly immature.

[00:32:02] Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that we'll have to keep, uh, Keep an eye on because I agree. I think at the moment, the fact that, you know, when you think about, so, you know, we've got a lovely big number that it's, it's somewhere between 40, 000 and 48, 000 company carbon footprints. Cause we ask everyone to give a range for a specific number of clients.

[00:32:48] So, you know, that, that's what, you know, one of the things that will come up when people sort of think about is like, well, there's, there's space for all of us right now, right now there's, there's, there's, there's room to grow. left, right and center. And so there's not as much competition. [00:33:00] So could that change?

[00:33:23] It's people. People do business with people, even when you're on a B2B transaction. And this is a B2B network, but it's people who are sitting within it. And so what the corporate line will be will often be very different than what an individual will do or say, particularly if they're in a space where they know they're not going to be personally quoted.

[00:34:17] If we do that and lead by example. People tend to reciprocate people. It's that kind of like a group therapy session where as soon as one person goes to the next level, um, it gives permission for everyone else to make themselves that much more vulnerable. So I think a lot of it's going to be a cultural thing about how we.

[00:34:58] Um, you've both [00:35:00] touched upon life cycle analysis. It is a wild West out there. But for the right reasons, how do you think we're going to tackle that? Because a lot of it is on assumptions and a lot of it is on, well, we chose that because of. So the first thing to say is that it's, it's, it's still more true in carbon accounting, but to be clear, even in financial accounting, interpretation is very important.

[00:35:55] Uh, for, for our sector as well. I think that's Donald Trump's argument, isn't it, at the moment? In, [00:36:00] uh, the New York courts? Anyway. Uh, exactly. Exactly. He's trying to inter I don't know, I think he's made up a figure, but whatever. Yeah, just, yes. My apartment is twice the size in square meters. I walked it myself.

[00:36:40] Potentially regulatory, regulatory driven. The long game here, right? And where this kind of I think, this is just personal opinion. Where it will need to get to eventually, for simplicity's sake, is that carbon data is going to have to be quite like financial data. In that, in [00:37:00] principle, if every organization in the world measured their scope one emissions, the fuel that they burn, everything else is data sharing and analytics.

[00:37:27] And so if we can get to the point where everyone is calculating. You know, scopes one and two, which for most businesses is quite a straightforward ask. It's their utility bills and their vehicle fleet, which you've, you've got that data for financial reasons anyway. Then in principle, what I, you know, where I think we could end up going, and this is why all the big account, uh, accountancy firms are rushing into this space, seeing that they can play a big role in it, is that on an invoice.

[00:38:23] You know, I would, I would buy a pencil and it would tell me this is not 0. 1 tons of CO2e. Hopefully not. That would be a very heavy pencil, but you know, it'd be 0. 1 tons of CO2e, um, for this pencil. And that would factor in all of the processing that had gone into it from the raw materials that came into it, from the transportation, from all of these things, where if everyone just adds on their bit, and then if I then sell that pencil to someone else, I go, right, the scope one emissions that, were reported to me on my invoice plus my scope one emissions that have been added onto that.

[00:39:16] Unusual in that the amount of materials we're trying to get our date, our APDs for is, is vast. You know, we're, we're putting, you know, 500, 000 items together in a building. If you include every nail, you know, it's, it's just vast numbers. And, and that's been blowing my head. Like how are we going to get these EPDs reliable?

[00:39:57] How much did you burn? How much did [00:40:00] you burn? That's, that's a moment. I'm having a moment here. Thanks for that. You're welcome. I think it's, it's, it, it is that thing where we, I, to a certain extent where we are over complicating a solution to an issue because we, because policy isn't where it needs to be.

[00:40:36] This is one of my favorites of sort of tidbits, which is that people sort of think of financial accounting is this thing that has just always been there. We've always known. And I, you know, I can read a financial report from a Chinese company and, and I know what their company It's, you know, doing the profit module that has never, that's not always been the case.

[00:41:18] And you could bring some of that profits and report it as this year's profits. That's like offsetting similar kind of principles, isn't it? And you could, you just, and you go, well, obviously that's going to create a balloon, obviously. And so people would start, people would be bringing forward profits, but then the next year.

[00:41:52] And so that's a brilliant bit of information. International bodies were formed to say this can never [00:42:00] happen again. We need to create a consistent method for accountancy internationally. And that was actually done by the same sort of, by the sort of the sister organization of IFRS, who are the ones who have just.

[00:42:31] We're going to create an IF, the IFRS S1 S2 using the International Sustainability Standards Board to do it. And, and they're sort of coming in on that. And so that's why that one has been taken up by government so quickly because it was created by a body that they already use to say, here's how we're doing financial accounting for our country now.

[00:43:09] I remember when I first started green element back in 2003, four, I genuinely thought that by 2020, I wouldn't have a job because I assumed as it turns out wrongly, that every single organization would innately reduce their emissions and their impact. because everyone is trained up to, it's just part of society.

[00:44:11] And I think we're in a fairly rich, affluent country. There are areas of the world that do not have the skills and expertise to measure. Carbon, but if we can solve the problem and make it incredibly easy. in those affluent countries, then everywhere in the world will be able to measure their carbon incredibly easily.

[00:44:59] [00:45:00] If I change this material, I can probably change, I can probably, so I hope that it will, you know. The, the, the automation, which will come for, for our, for our sector, as same as it does for all, um, will, will free us up to focus more of our resources and more of our time as organizations on actually helping hold people's hands and walking through the journey of achieving the reductions that they need to achieve.

[00:45:39] I mean, I think it's just, that's just human. You do, but it's obvious you see waste and you see opportunity. So, but go back to one of the comments that Andrew made quite early on about double counting and triple counting with scope one, two, and three emissions. And if you have. large organizations and many organizations reducing their impact on [00:46:00] scope one, two and three emissions, then there's double triple counting going on, which means the reductions will be bigger and faster.

[00:46:36] Let's be, let's be clear. Um, now, and there are going to be winners and losers in this race in the same as there will be our blockbusters and there will be our Netflixes. Um, but the, the critical thing is that this is a race that we will all win. Or we'll all lose together. And it's not about who's first across the line, it's about who's last across the line.

[00:47:21] and it's got loads of holes in it and you've invented the whole patch kit. Don't hoard it and keep it back and make lots of profits. You're still on a sinking boat. It is absolutely in your fundamental interest to get as many people making patch kits as you possibly can because you're in the boat. If the boat sinks.

[00:47:57] Do I have to be invited? Do I apply? What's the process? [00:48:00] Um, so you just go to the website, carbonaccountingalliance. com and there's a join us button and there's a little Microsoft form that you fill out and, uh, sort of just. telling us who to contact and what sort of, uh, services you're providing, things like that.

[00:48:38] But yeah, so it's very simple. There's, there's, there's currently no costs involved or anything like that. We want to make it open and accessible. Um, although given the size and scale we're reaching now, we're going to have to figure out some way, I think supporting some funding. Yeah, you're going to have to, you have to, you're not going to be able to do it yourself otherwise.

[00:49:13] That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much. I'm Charlie Luxton. And I'm Will Richardson at Green Element. For more information on Green Element and everything we've discussed today, please check the show notes. And if you have any feedback or questions, you can definitely get in contact with us at Green Element on social media.

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