An analysis of Swedish corporate climate footprints – reaching a more consistent and scientific approach

Corporate action has become increasingly prevalent in recent years in order to address the urgent issue of climate change. A wide range of concepts are today being used to describe company climate footprints, where one single concept can have varying definitions due to inconsistent approaches on what to include and not in the calculations. The lack of uniform concept definitions further results in comparability issues of corporate climate footprints. The aim of this project was to investigate the current concept utilization and definitions in order to make recommendations of consistent and more scientifically-based concepts describing corporate emissions. A further objective was to identify what is needed for a more comparable system for assessing company emissions. This was done by conducting qualitative interviews with six Swedish companies and organizations. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview material, whereby six major themes were identified. The results exhibited a range of different concepts used by the companies interviewed, where differences in for instance definitions and emission coverage were identified. The interviewed companies base their emission calculations on the well-established Greenhouse Gas Protocol standard, where indirect “Scope 3” emissions and avoided emissions were perceived to be the most challenging parts of the standard due to  unclear system boundaries requirements. A usage of various branch specific standards was also identified. Existing comparability issues of corporate emissions were identified to be primarily system boundary drawing for indirect and avoided emissions. To reach a more comparable system, the interviewees expressed a need for a universal emission accounting standard and clearer system boundary drawing directives. The interviews further identified several already existing cooperation activities on making the calculations more consistent within the same branch. Moreover, the interviews revealed differences in prerequisites between public and private organizations where for example climate compensation is not always possible within the public sector. Diverse motives for emission accounting were also identified, where competition and an individual will were highlighted as major driving forces. I recommend a reduction of the number of concepts utilized, as well as making international standard definitions consistent and more precise. The Science Based Targets initiative’s upcoming standard on corporate net zero targets is further considered a good tool for addressing comparability issues, whilst specific guidance on indirect and avoided emissions has to provided. An international standardization of the existing branch specific standards is also necessary to enable a comparable system of corporate emissions.