We measured our emissions

For more than ten years, Hansel has had an environmental programme that measures emissions and sets targets for their reduction. This has already given us a fairly good image of the organisation’s emissions. In the spring of 2021, we still decided to leave the WWF’s Green Office environmental programme and concentrate more on emissions calculation with a tendered consultant.

The Procurement Pulse tool for customers contains a calculator that was developed with the Finnish Environment Institute. It describes the life-cycle emissions of organisations based on purchase invoices and average emission factors (ENVIMAT model). Nearly everything that creates emissions is bought, so Procurement Pulse’s emissions calculator already provides a comprehensive picture of the emissions. However, the average emission factors do not differentiate between mixed and green electricity.

More reliable results with the GHG protocol

Emissions readings measured with the two mentioned methods differed significantly, so we at Hansel wanted to understand more about the topic and get an external consultant to calculate our organisation’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG protocol) carbon footprint that is used widely internationally.

In accordance with the standard, emissions are divided into three scopes. Scope 1 contains direct emissions from sources owned or managed by the company. These include emissions from the smokestacks of factories owned by the company and emissions from the exhaust pipes of vehicles the company manages. Hansel had no scope 1 emissions. Scope 2 contains indirect emissions from energy consumption, i.e. emissions from electricity and district heat. Scope 3 contains everything else, including device purchases, company cars, business travel, consequential emissions from energy consumption, waste management, and other purchases.

According to the GHG protocol, scopes 1 and 2 are mandatory, meaning they are always calculated. In addition, the organisation’s carbon footprint calculation contains the main emissions sources from scope 3. We used the emission factors from Procurement Pulse and accounting materials in calculating scope 3 emissions.

Calculation result for 2021 and 2020

Our GHG protocol calculation result was zero emissions for scope 1 in both years. For scope 2, the number was 65 tCO₂e in 2021 (54 tCO₂e  in 2020). We could report the mandatory reading from scopes 1 and 2 as Hansel’s carbon footprint, which was 65 tonnes. However, we wanted the calculation of our emissions to be as comprehensive as possible, so we included nearly all of scope 3 as well. Our scope 3 emissions were 582 tonnes (713 tonnes in 2020) and 466 tonnes without the Hilma service (603 tonnes in 2020). We managed to calculate most of our scope 3 emissions with Procurement Pulse using general emission factors, and some in more detail with a consultant. Our total carbon footprint is 530 tonnes (657 tonnes in 2020) without the Hilma service. We thought for a long time about how we should allocate the carbon footprint of services as pass-through expenses. We decided that the emissions of Hilma belonged to the service users rather than Hansel.

The limitations are very significant when calculating emissions. In addition to the Hilma service, we made another exception: we omitted the journeys between employees’ homes and work from the calculation. We made this limitation because an estimated 90% of our employees worked remotely from home, so these journeys were not made. When calculating Hansel’s emissions in the future, it is important to keep the same limitations so that we can compare the results from different years.

Emissions from Hansel’s own operations