Emissions are happening everywhere, directly or indirectly. Scope 3 emissions as per GHG Protocol brings accountability for emissions that are not intuitive. Say for example, you as a company have core business in pharmaceuticals. Alongside, you also own (but not operate) a piece of company involved in Oil and Gas sector.

One may say that since you own only the pharmaceuticals company, only the emissions as a result of manufacturing of pharmaceuticals can be attributed to you, but since you also own a company which has emissions, the proportionate emissions as per your ownership are also attributed to you

Guess for which kind of enterprises would this be most relevant? That’s right, financial institutions. Any bank’s carbon footprint is not limited to the electricity consumption of their offices, but their Scope 3 includes emissions from the investments as well. As per GHG Protocol Standard, we divide the type of investments into four : Equity Investment, Debt Investment, Project Finance, Managed Investments or Client services.

A big challenge here is often that share of a financial institution in a company is dynamic and hence it becomes crucial to reference to a particular time period to calculate the emissions. Apart from using GHG Protocol method which we have been using so far in our blogs, there is also a guidance document by PCAF (Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials) that lists how financial institutions should calculate their carbon emissions. To know more about this, reach out to us and we shall take your through case study of how we have helped a financial institution in this journey.

Adaptation to the past history data, present observed and future predicted impacts will in the coming decades be needed, as well as be complementary to global climate mitigation actions. Narvik Science Park has made a report on this in the GREBE-Project.