On the environment: Why do a greenhouse gas audit?

We continue to address sustainability and environmental themes on the blog from multiple perspectives. In this particular post, we will walk you through the what, why, and how of greenhouse gas audits, including recommendations for what steps to take once the audit is done based on our organizational journey to reduce emissions and ultimately, achieve net zero.

What is a greenhouse gas audit?

Before we get into the why, let’s talk a little bit about the what. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are gasses emitted by businesses and other human processes that trap heat in our atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Seven gases, as defined in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, contribute to global warming: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PCFs), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3).

A greenhouse gas inventory/audit, also known as a carbon footprint assessment, is a quantified list of an organization’s greenhouse gas emissions and emission sources. It's a strategic tool for understanding, managing, and communicating emissions from an organization’s activities. The inventory provides numerical data that lets a company set a benchmark that it can use to measure its ongoing sustainability efforts.

In addition to mitigating climate change, reducing your company’s carbon emissions holds potential benefits for your mission and values, operations, and bottom line. You might be surprised to learn what your organization’s largest emissions categories are and that the tools to reduce those emissions are already available.

Increasingly, consumers, government, employees, and others are taking note of organizations' environmental sustainability activities. For example, in 2022, 63% of Canadians told us that the environmental impact of the book industry matters to them and specifically, it matters to 68% of Canadian book buyers and 65% of Canadian library book borrowers (Canadian Book Consumer Study).

GHG emissions are broken down into three types:

1. Direct emissions (known as Scope 1): from onsite combustion and mobile sources

2. Indirect emissions (Scope 2): from purchased electricity and steam

3. Optional emissions (Scope 3): for example, product transport, employee business travel, and employee commuting

You can get more information on the different kinds of GHG emissions here:

• Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions: What you need to know.

• What are scopes 1, 2 and 3 of carbon emissions?

Scope 3 emissions are often misunderstood and hard to calculate — GHG Protocol has a good resource for Scope 3 calculation guidance. For book publishers, The Green Book Alliance has released an excellent introduction to the different levels of GHG emissions that might be pertinent to your business.

The idea is to get the big picture of the GHG emissions that are part of your business processes and work on reducing them as much as possible. The ultimate goal is to achieve net zero by 2050 or sooner!

How to do a GHG audit

The process can be daunting, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Many resources are available on how your organization can perform a GHG inventory. Some places to get started:

• US EPA GHG Inventory guidelines for low emitters

• Practical steps for reporting on greenhouse gas emissions

• GHG Protocol calculation tools and guidance

• Ambitious corporate climate action

In addition, many organizations can help you with your inventory/audit and, in some cases, certify that you’re following the protocol correctly. BookNet Canada has worked with the team at carbonzero to help with our GHG inventory for the last three years, you can see more on that below.

Moving forward

Once you have your initial benchmark, it's time to make some changes. Some things your business can consider to reduce its GHG emissions:

• Use renewable energy

• Reduce your energy use

  • Turn off lights, computers and other equipment when not in use.

  • Purchase green (Energy Star) certified equipment if new equipment is needed.

  • Use sustainable hosting and IT infrastructure.

• Regulate business travel

  • Use online meetings and events.

• Choose sustainable suppliers

  • Ask if potential suppliers have a sustainability report.

  • Can they provide data on their Scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions? These are usually tied to your Scope 3 emissions.

  • Publishers might want to refer to GBA’s publisher-printer sustainability checklist.

• Eliminate waste

  • Whenever possible, move away from printed documents — go digital!

  • Make recycling easy for your staff and visitors.

  • Use sustainable packaging.

  • Eliminate single-use plastics.

• Get employees and partners involved

• Responsibly offset carbon that cannot be reduced or eliminated directly

After you have made some changes, it's time to measure again — perform another GHG audit.

A BookNet Canada case study

Three years ago, BookNet Canada set environmental sustainability as a strategic focus for both our organization and for projects and services.

Through our partnership with the Green Book Alliance, we've been promoting activities to help make the book supply chain more sustainable. We've also been working on making our own business more environmentally sustainable.

This began with looking at our operations and assessing where we could make quick changes. Part of this initial step was to measure our carbon footprint through a GHG emissions inventory. Partnering with carbonzero BookNet Canada has just completed its third yearly GHG audit.

Over the last three years, BookNet’s emissions have fallen entirely under the Scope 3 designation. Areas that we needed to consider were:

• Our office

  • Power and heating

  • Purchasing supplies

• Travel

  • Business travel

  • Employee commuting

• Shipping

• Printing and production

• Events

• Computer

  • Servers and Storage

The last three years have not been average, as the pandemic impacted many business processes. So, creating a baseline GHG inventory has been difficult.

While we were conscious of limiting our business travel, there were very few travel opportunities for anyone from 2020 to 2022. BookNet maintained an office during the pandemic, but much of the building was unoccupied during the pandemic period, so energy use was low.

At the start of 2023, BookNet moved to remote work, so central office energy use will be nil. Though we still have energy use for people working at home to account for. Data servers and storage are our most considerable remaining scope three emissions.

The aggregate GHG emissions from the BookNet Canada GHG inventory have been calculated and reported in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) emissions, which were 13.72 tCO2e in 2022. The table below shows the breakdown of BookNet’s GHG emissions for the last three years.

BookNet’s total GHG emission decreased by 52.8% in 2021 compared to the 2020 GHG Inventory and by an additional 0.5% in 2022 compared to 2021.

We're committed to reducing our GHG emissions through changes in our operations. For those emissions we cannot eliminate, BookNet has decided to offset the carbon.