Carbon Manager is built on a carbon foot-printing methodology developed by Cogo. The methodology is aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), which is the global standard for companies and organisations to measure and manage their carbon emissions.
The Carbon Manager uses a hybrid calculation that leverages both your spend and activity data. Your spending and purchases are reflected in your accounting transactions. These transactions are linked to suppliers and assigned to categories. Using country-specific economic data, we know that the average spend in these categories is associated with a certain amount of carbon emissions. By combining these averages with your spending we are able to calculate an estimate of the carbon footprint for each of your transactions.
In certain important categories, we can also supplement the calculation with activity data. This means that we can improve the accuracy of your footprint estimate. To do this we ask you for specific usage information, rather than relying on just the spend-based averages e.g. kilowatt hours of electricity use for the month, in place of the spend.
Is just using my spending data enough to have an accurate footprint?
Most of your business activities have a cost associated with them - e.g. buying fuel for company vehicles and purchasing goods and services from your suppliers. These activities also have associated carbon emissions.
Carbon footprints are always an estimate, and the Cogo footprint is no different. We use the latest and greatest data available to convert your spend data into your footprint.
Whilst using spend data alone will give you a footprint estimate that’s sufficiently accurate to be useful, supplementing your spend data with activity data such as electricity and gas use will improve the accuracy of your footprint estimate.
What if we purchase internationally?
As a NZ based organisation using Carbon Manager, all available EFs are based on the average characteristics of supply chain spend per industry you purchase from. International and domestic supply of products & services is factored into this, but only at an average level e.g. electronics are mostly manufactured offshore, so the EF for this is based on the footprint for manufacture in those exporting countries.