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Where can we significantly reduce GHG emissions? Where do we get the best GHG reduction bang for our buck?
By David Jaber October 22, 2021 (Updated on July 24, 2024)
Adapted from “Climate Positive Business: How You and Your Company Hit Bold Climate Goals and Go Net Zero,” by David Jaber, published this month by Routledge. Listen to our recent podcast interview here.
A handful of greenhouse gas-reduction actions have established costs and payback, such as solar and wind, where the hours of sun and speed of wind are known (or can be measured) for a given location, and the costs of installation are relatively fixed. Returns on investment into other actions depend on the context. How often is equipment operating? How much energy waste are we preventing? In exploring the best investment opportunities among these actions, two questions come up:
- Where can we significantly reduce GHG emissions?
- Where do we get the best GHG reduction bang for our buck?
Reduce significant GHG sources
Quantifying Scope 1/Scope 2/Scope 3 helps address the first question, pointing to where your largest GHG contributors are. What you don’t yet know is the impact of any actions, and whether an action will reduce emissions by 10 percent or 50 percent.
Pretend your emissions are those shown in the chart below. Scope 1 totals 6 percent of total emissions, Scope 2 is 22 percent and Scope 3 is the remainder. This chart also shows that you were able to collect electricity information from your supply chain, so it shows up in Scope 3 as well as in Scope 2. Electricity as a category across Scopes 2 and 3 represents 42 percent of total emissions, making it a prime candidate for reductions.
