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Net Zero Hub
What is Net Zero?
Net Zero is achieving a balance between the CO2 emitted by your business and the carbon removed through your work to reduce emissions wherever possible and then 'offsetting' any residual carbon as required.
BCR Associates has the tools, specialists and experience to guide you through your Net Zero pathway and negotiate the changing energy landscape. Our primary aim is to deliver cost and emissions reductions through long term management of your consumption and contracts reducing exposure to costs and emissions of fossil fuel consumption.
- Energy Crisis - costs unstable and increasing
- Supplier, customer, and shareholder pressures
- Market volatility and risk
- New technologies and renewable resources available
- Government regulation
- Cost control – removing risk from evolving energy crisis environment
- Efficiency – investing in reductions of resource consumption
- Decarbonisation – understanding the evolving impacts on business
- Greenwashing – with so many solutions in the market place its difficult to understand which products are genuinely sustainable
Our Net Zero Pathway
Understand your needs, identify and measure your usage to establish your Carbon Footprint
Set short- and long-term carbon reduction targets to achieve company Net Zero goals
Make strategic buying decisions based on your energy data to control and reduce costs
Establish quick low-cost wins by implementing changes to behaviour, resources and infrastructure based on key findings
Devise a strategy to invest and implement energy efficiency measures to reduce carbon emissions and work towards being Net Zero
Continuous monitoring, innovation, and improvement to ensure carbon neutrality as your business grows
Our Approach to Net Zero
We focus on your priorities and highlight where you can achieve quick-wins in the context of the longer term journey.
Our practical approach begins with understanding where you are starting from.
We review your consumption and costs from automated analysis of your purchase ledger to generate an "Emissions Inventory" - a complete overview of your company’s carbon impact in line with GHG Protocol.
As a starting point your purchase ledger will provide "Activity data" against which "Emission Factors" can be applied to give you a baseline figure.
What are Scopes 1-2-3 of Emissions?
GHG Protocol is a globally recognised set of standards used to measure and manage emissions. These are broken down as follows:
SCOPE-1 ENERGY -For most companies these emissions are dominated gas and vehicle fuel. These are emissions where CO2 is emitted directly by your business and can be immediately controlled by you. As an example: your gas boiler has a flame you can see and it burns fuel and emits CO2 through its flue. It is your choice to turn it on or off.
Scope-1 includes fuel emissions from company-owned cars, diesel generators, gas boilers and also other more potent Green House Gasses (GHG) emitted such as air-conditioning leaks.
To measure and record these emissions BCR will arrange for your existing gas meters and vehicle fuel data to feed into Visible Energy - your energy management platform. For 'other' GHG emission your AC maintenance log is key.
SCOPE-2 ENERGY - For the majority of companies this will be electricity. The emissions are termed 'indirect' because your demand and use of the electrical energy is satisfied by someone else generating the electricity for you. Because you cannot generally control how the actual electricity is generated, your share of the resulting emissions are termed 'indirect'.
Scope-2 applies to all generation of energy purchased from a utility provider, such as heating, cooling, electricity or steam. If you are purchasing Green electricity you will need to obtain the 'primary data' regarding the actual emissions and the specific certification to prove the origin of the energy. This would form part of your Scope-2 declaration.
To measure and record these emissions BCR will arrange for your existing electricity meters and supplier data to feed into Visible Energy - your energy management platform. With your billing we will obtain your certifications and generation mix in order to ensure the correct specific emission factors are applied to your electricity usage.
SCOPE-3 Business Activities - There are 15 areas of business activity that fall under this scope including emissions from purchased goods and services, capital goods, transport and distribution as well as business travel. It is a complex and fascinating exercise to analyse where your business generates these emissions within your upstream and downstream supply chain. As an example: the emissions from all the operations to produce the parts for your product, or service, and the emissions from their transport to your site will be your Scope-3. In addition all the emissions generated from the packaging, transport, use and disposal of your finished product, or service will also be your Scope-3 emissions.
Beware - for many companies Scope-3 emissions will represent the highest (90%+) percentage of your business emissions, but are the most challenging to record, manage and reduce. As such the majority of compliance only required Scope-1 and 2 to be reported.
Good news: As a business you define the limits of your Scope-3 emissions, and it gives you a great opportunity for working with your key suppliers and encouraging them to reduce the CO2 impact of their products and service (this is termed "in-setting")
BCR Associates work with you to identify the largest and most relevant areas of the 15 areas from purchase ledger data. We then work closely with you and your supply chain to increase the quality and reporting of the data allowing you to hone both your ongoing reporting and your original baseline. Scope-3 looks at the most crucial emissions from your core business activity - it does not have to include everything!
How we can help
- Calculate your business’ carbon footprint from company data
- Provide site to machine level consumption monitoring, reporting and analytics
- Advise on bespoke procurement solutions to manage risk and costs
- Access to experts who will tailor a carbon management plan to your individual business needs
- Provide renewable options to self-generate onsite
- Access our all-inclusive service throughout the year to manage supply chain, data and compliance requirements at all levels
- Guidance on regulatory compliance such as ESOS and SECR
- Access to finance specialists to identify funding and Tax Reliefs for Net Zero projects
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