Sustainable business and organisations: The Development of Commercial Local Area

Resource and Emissions Modelling.

Peter Bradley

RESOLVE

27/11/12.

Emissions accounting and reporting gaps

• The presentation addresses the vexed issue of operationalising environmental reporting and resource efficiency.

• UK GHG, waste and water use targets: action required;

• Some progress but many businesses are not accounting and reporting in the required manner, let alone

referencing wider targets;

• Detailed government and non government datasets on GHG emissions, wastes and water use do not exist to fill

the gaps;

Methodological gaps

• Gaps between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ top down models.

• Lack of an environmental input-output modelling

perspective consistent with life cycle analysis, that can inform sustainable procurement of business.

Resource efficiency and

environmental reporting

Elements of need:business

Need for environmental credentials in business

Infrastructure support

Avoiding diversion from core business

More quantitative data to help businesses benchmark

Need to encourage changes in behaviour

Need for a ‘champion’

Development of networks

Difficulty in understanding importance of acting

Need for support in acting

The need for scale

Elements of need: business

Elements of need:Government

To provide and prioritise

support to businesses

To help ensure that national

targets are met

To develop and prioritise

infrastructure to aid business

resource efficiency

identify the importance of acting

and changes in community

behaviour and

To aid sectors realisation of

economic and environmental

benefits

To provide understanding &

reports of businesses impacts

and opportunities

To facilitate economies of scale

Elements of need: government

Resource efficiency and environmental reporting

RESOLVE models

SELMAEstimation of embodied

GHG emissions attributableto final demand (excluding

exports) at the national level.

LARAEstimation of

direct & indirect resource & emissions attributable

to households at

a local level

CLARE

Estimation ofdirect & indirect GHG

emissions, wastes and

water use resulting from businesses activities

at a local level

Output: direct

and indirect emissions attributable to households

consumption and lifestyle choices

Output: direct and

indirect GHG emissions, wastes and water use

estimated for businesses

Output: direct and indirect

household resource use and emissions

Definition of direct and indirect

• Direct: those emissions and water use occurring on site

• Indirect: broadly, those emissions and water use generated off site but within the supply chain of the business

• Broadly in line with Publicly Available Specification 2050(BSI 2008);

Specific objectives of CLARE

1.

Direct for Individual businesses

2. Direct for all businesses

in an area

3. Indirect for one businessor all businesses

in an area

GHG

water

waste

GHG

CLARE Applications:

Estimates for

individual business

Breaking down of targets

identifies, an

obligation

Educates business

on their impact and

the expected

changes to be

achieved

Provides business

with a starting

benchmark

Allows local authorities to put into

action efficient ‘soft

regulation & progress

monitoring’

Enables national or sector specific targets

to be broken down by

business, to a locality,

and individual business targets to be

set.

CLARE Applications:

Estimation for

business within an area

Allows local government to

go further than just waste

diversion

Allows efficient estimation

in specific areas and by whom, of use for planning

infrastructure and strategy

Provides local authorities with an

estimation of GHG

emissions, wastes

and water use in a given area

Allows targets and priorities to be set for

specific areas

Tool potentially

enables businesses of a local area to be

confronted with

their impacts as a group of leaders

CLARE Perspectives

Production perspective: emissions and water use that

directly arise from direct activity in different sectors;

Provision perspective: emissions and water use that occur upstream of a business in order to provide the

inputs to a businesses production.

Framework and methods

CLARE-direct

CLARE-indirect

EIO

Estimates of GHG emissions, wastes and

water use for business in a local area

CLARE

Copyright of University of Surrey and ONS

System diagram of CLARE–direct

Emissions

per £1M turnover (or GVA)

for SIC coded sectors

Emissions of a

SIC coded business (o)within a specific

area

UK emissions &

turnover (or GVA) by sector

Business Structure

Database

Number of employees

(size band) and SIC code of

business in a specific

geographical location

Average annual turn-

over (or GVA) per employee

for SIC sector employee

size band (£M)

Turnover of

the business (o)

Annual Respondents Data-

base

Copyright of University of Surrey and ONS

System diagram of CLARE-indirect

Total embodied indirect emissions attributable to the

sector from environmentalinput-output

Total turnover

for the sector or sub sector

from the Annual Business

Enquiry

Average £ turnover per employee for a size band

business of a specific sector

Number of employees (size band) and SIC code of a business in a specific

geographical location

Embodied indirect emissions

per £ of turnover

Total estimated £ of

turnover for business (o),

which has a specific SIC

sector and size band

Embodied indirect Emissions of

business (o) in a specific geographic location

for a year

Business Structure

Database

Annual Respondents Database

Copyright of University of Surrey and ONS

Case study: carbon(e) and food waste for Hospitality,

Southampton 2004

Hospitality carbon(e) added by postcode district

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

SO14 SO15 SO16 SO17 SO18 SO19

Th

ou

sa

nd

s to

nn

es

Production perspective

carbon(e) added - CO2e

Provision perspective

carbon (e) added - CO2e

Hospitality food waste added by postcode district

0

1

1

2

2

3

3

SO14 SO15 SO16 SO17 SO18 SO19

Th

ou

sa

nd

s to

nn

es

Production perspective

food waste added

Provision perspective

food waste added

Hospitality food waste added by postcode sectors

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

SO14 0 SO14 1 SO14 2 SO14 3 SO14 5 SO14 6 S014 7

To

nn

es

Indirect

food

waste

(tonnes)

Direct

food

waste

(tonnes)

Restaurants located in postcode district SO14

Scenario: A restaurant’s food waste

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Retaurant business with 25 employees

To

nn

es

Indirect

food waste

(tonnes)

Direct

food waste

(tonnes)

Elements of need that can be addressed

Elements of need:business

Need for environmental credentials in business

Infrastructure support

Avoiding diversion from core business

More quantitative data to help businesses benchmark

Need to encourage changes in behaviour

Need for a ‘champion’

Development of networks

Difficulty in understanding importance of acting

Need for support in acting

The need for scale

Elements of need: business

?

?

?

x

Elements of need:Government

To provide and prioritise

support to businesses

To help ensure that national

targets are met

To develop and prioritise

infrastructure to aid business

resource efficiency

identify the importance of acting

and changes in community

behaviour and

To aid sectors realisation of

economic and environmental

benefits

To provide understanding &

reports of businesses impacts

and opportunities

To facilitate economies of scale

Elements of need: government

Elements of need that can be addressed

?

?

DiscussionTwo key contributions:

1. A new model

2. A new perspective.

Bridging the gap: CLARE enables efficient estimation

of very detailed direct and indirect emissions estimates,

with coverage of all relevant businesses in an area.

Bridging the gap: Estimates comparable across different entities, using consistent data, methods and

system boundaries and a transparent approach;

The new model

Provides detail and coverage and accounts for

production as well as provision impacts

Without detail and coverage – cannot effectively engage

recognition and action of businesses in an area

Without detail and coverage – cannot prioritise products, businesses, areas and inform local planning activities

CLARE estimate – not a substitute for actual

measurement and reporting

The new perspective

Provides an understanding of the amount of upstream

(indirect) emissions embodied in purchases (of inputs) by a business; the indirect carbon(e) added when

summed up.

Identifies the amount of indirect emissions that a

business can have influence over via sustainable procurement.

Production + provision perspective = total emissions

attributable to production.

The new perspective

Complements the production and consumption and shared responsibility perspectives, but provides a more

holistic picture, consistent with LCA and specific to

sustainable procurement.

Care must however be taken when applying across different sectors - risk of double counting if estimates

from different sectors are combined. See Bradley et al (2012a):

Next stepsExtend the model to estimate upstream emissions

emitted within the reference jurisdiction;

Apply the water model in conjunction with local water

availability data to inform potential local resource ‘bottlenecks’

Use CLARE to provide the basis for new systems as

called for by Jones (2009) and Lamberton (2005);

Apply the provision perspective to other sectors

Acknowledgments

"This work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates.”

I wish to thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council for their funding of my work.

Thank you for listening!

☺

p.bradley@surrey.ac.uk

Journal papersBradley P, T Jackson, A Druckman (2012a). “Commercial local area resource

and emissions modelling – navigating towards new perspectives and

applications”. Journal of Cleaner Production (accepted and in Press).

Bradley P., M. Leach and J. Torriti (2012b). “A review of the costs and benefits

of demand response for electricity in the UK”. Energy Policy (accepted and

in Press). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.09.039

Bradley P., C. Thomas, A. Druckman and T. Jackson. (2009) “Accounting for

Waste: comparative analysis within the UK.” Institution of Civil Engineers,

Journal of Waste and Resource Management. Vol. 162, issue 1 pp. 5-13.

Druckman A, P. Bradley, E. Papathanasopoulou, T. Jackson (2008).

“Measuring progress towards carbon reduction in the UK”. Ecological

Economics vol. 66 issue 4, pp. 594-604.