What best describes your business requirements?
- We're just getting started.
Calculate our baseline carbon footprint. - We monitor GHG, but it's a pain.
Streamline our carbon-management process. - We're trying to reduce our footprint.
Use energy efficiency to drive emissions down. - We're part of a manufacturing supply chain.
Calculate the carbon footprint of our products. - We want to offset our GHG emissions.
Help us purchase carbon credits.
Are you prepared for the new carbon economy?
Calculate your baseline carbon footprint
When most people talk about the environmental impact of "carbon," they're really referring to six different varieties of greenhouse gases (GHG) that vary in the degree to which they heat up the earth's atmosphere.
Your company generates these gases in a variety of ways, depending on the type of manufacturing or air-conditioning equipment it uses, the amount of electricity and natural gas it consumes, the amount of miles your employees drive or fly, and a whole lot more in between. So your company has many different "emission sources" that produce different types of GHG.
Your company's carbon footprint is the sum of all the GHG produced by each different emission source, usually expressed in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e.
If it all sounds complicated, it is.
Fortunately, you can count on FirstCarbon to simplify carbon management.
Our starting point is a GHG inventory, a detailed accounting of how much CO2e each of your emission sources generates. We start by thoroughly understanding your business requirements:
- Why do you want or need to report your carbon footprint? Voluntary reporting schemes like The Climate Registry require a different approach than compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the United Kingdom's CRC legislation.
- What's your line of business? There are different ways of calculating your carbon footprint based on organization type. For example, a local government would require a different protocol than a family farm or an automobile manufacturer.
- Must a third party verify the accuracy of your carbon footprint? Many reporting schemes require third-party verification. We begin with that end in mind, building an inventory that will stand up to outside scrutiny.
The end result? You get an accurate snapshot of your company's total carbon emissions, in the proper reporting format that an appropriate third-party verifier can easily audit.
Get a carbon-footprint consultation
Streamline carbon-management processes
All GHG inventories are not created equal.
Many companies start out with a home-grown GHG inventory, often utilizing a simple spreadsheet prepared annually by some combination of environmental health and safety (EH&S) personnel, resources from other departments or consultants.
Unfortunately, the results can be less than optimal:
- The carbon footprint is inaccurate – and that can get expensive. If your carbon-reporting protocol requires third-party verification, you can easily rack up 80-120 hours' worth of extra charges as verifiers chase down incomplete data and correct erroneous calculations.
- The information isn't timely. Most companies don't put their carbon spreadsheets together until six months after the end of the reporting period. So by the time you document your first month's data, it's 18 months after the fact – way too late to act on what you learn.
- You can't turn your carbon footprint into business intelligence. Static spreadsheet data doesn't lend itself well to forecasting, trend analysis or search queries – the very tools you need to map out a plan for reducing your carbon footprint. And isn't that the whole point?
There's a better way.
FirstCarbon takes a radically different approach to GHG inventories:
- Our inventory managers are also third-party verifiers. Because we've been on the other side of the carbon audit, our inventories have built-in quality assurance and quality control. And that saves you time and money when your verifiers come to call later in the year.
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We take you beyond the spreadsheet with robust carbon-management software. Our ghgTrack™ application manages your carbon footprint in real-time instead of once a year, with reports that detail GHG emissions companywide, by business unit and by facility.
Learn more about ghgTrack carbon-management software - We let you store third-party documentation right inside ghgTrack. For third-party verifiers, it's not enough to say you used 800 kW of electricity; they want to see the bill. Our carbon-footprint software lets you append images, PDF files and other documents, so your data and the supporting documentation reside in the same location.
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We collect and manage your GHG data. Most companies underestimate the amount of work and additional staff it can take to collect and process all the required carbon-footprint data. Let FirstCarbon map out and streamline your processes for collecting, digitizing and retrieving utility bills and other carbon-related documents.
Learn more about carbon-management outsourcing
Get a carbon-management consultation
Reduce your carbon footprint with energy efficiency
Energy-efficiency improvements produce immediately quantifiable cost savings by reducing your electricity and heating bills. At the same time, they also reduce your carbon footprint.
Learn more about FirstCarbon's energy-efficiency practice
Calculate the carbon footprint of individual products
Just as you can calculate the carbon footprint for an entire company, you can also drill down into GHG emissions and other sustainability metrics for individual products.
Learn more about FirstCarbon's life-cycle assessment practice
Purchase carbon credits
If your company has a high carbon footprint, you may need to purchase carbon credits to comply with regulatory requirements. Or, you may want to leverage credits to achieve carbon neutrality.
Learn more about FirstCarbon's carbon-trading practice