Dave Newport: Some Emissions Are Out of Your Control—and the Measurements May Be, Too

Today’s Buildings & Grounds guest blogger, Dave Newport, is director of the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass)

Measuring a college’s Scope 3 carbon emissions is an imprecise science, at best. But help is on the way—or is it?

Scope 3 emissions are those an institution neither owns nor directly controls, like emissions from jet travel, commuting, waste disposal, and purchasing. Currently, many colleges try to measure those emissions with surveys, interpolations, mileage/cost conversions, models, or other methods sometimes brewed up by the administrators doing the work. Unlike Scope 1 or 2 carbon emissions (such as those from purchased and/or produced power), you can’t just read a meter and calculate how much carbon was released.

However, there is no doubt that Scope 3 emissions are very important contributors to overall carbon emissions. For instance, much of the carbon embedded in the goods and services we buy wouldn’t be released if we didn’t buy them. To take one example, a paper manufacturer releases a lot of carbon producing the massive amounts of paper a college can consume. So getting a handle on the emissions we are enabling incentivizes conservation and promotes awareness.

To address the analytical shortcomings, the World Resources Institute—author of the reference method for Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon measurement (the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard)—is trying out a new method for more precisely quantifying Scope 3 emissions. The Scope 3 Accounting and Reporting Standard is currently being tested by 60-plus corporations (although no colleges) with an eye towards roll out later this year. After that happens, a college seeking to report credible Scope 3 emissions will be duty-bound to use this method.

Well, as the saying goes, you have to be careful what you wish for. A recent review of the institute’s proposed method by an ad hoc group of college carbon counters left us all reeling. While many of us have for years decried the imprecision of the current Scope 3 estimating practice, we worry that the new method is so onerous and work-intensive that many may simply elect not to report Scope 3 emissions—which the institute says is optional anyway.

Likewise, the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment organizers are no doubt reviewing the institute’s proposed changes to insure consistency. Under the climate commitment requirements, colleges must use the the institute’s standard to measure some Scope 3 sources (commuting and travel) and determine how to mitigate them to zero. However, the institute’s proposed new standard states that if an organization is going to measure any Scope 3 emissions, virtually all upstream and downstream sources must be assayed, not just certain ones. This could overload many college carbon practitioners.

Indeed, two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley just completed an inventory of that institution’s Scope 3 emissions using the proposed method. A quick review of their working paper reveals that the emissions are led not by air travel or commuting, but by construction and a dozen other sources that together account for 60 percent of the university’s total emissions. Construction emissions alone are more than double air travel and commuting and total Scope 3 emissions are five times more than air travel and commuting. No word on how long it took to produce these data, but the report outlines the university’s approach—which is thorough, to say the least.

The institute proclaims that its new standard is designed for all types of organizations, but it is clearly targeted to big corporations. Budget-impacted and short-staffed college-sustainability personnel will be hard pressed to develop the horsepower needed to comply with the analytical rigor of the institute’s impending methodology.

In the meantime, colleges’ carbon personnel may want to enter the institute’s debate. The last planned round of public comment will open in June. The more the institute hears from campus-sustainability professionals, the better the chance that this vitally important method can be made more workable. Then we can all spend more time cutting carbon emissions. —Dave Newport