Whether it is investor interest, regulatory requirements, consumer pressure, or employee expectations, there are lots of reasons a company may be interested in starting to track and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The math behind such reports is fairly simple, and there are lots of programs that can do these calculations for you. Anyone getting into carbon accounting now will have a much easier time of it than they would have in 2005 or even 2015. The amount of data, number of educational opportunities and tools, and general know-how has greatly increased.

Note: for the purposes of this article, I will use carbon accounting and GHG accounting interchangeably. There are differences, but I won’t get into it here. This is a huge topic, so there is quite a bit I am purposefully not covering, such as regulatory requirements, boundaries, and offsets.

The biggest challenge, and often the most time-consuming, part of these reports is actually collecting the appropriate data. This is called ‘activity data’. It is the resource use that results in the emissions themselves, such kilowatt hours of electricity or miles traveled. You can only do the math if you have the base numbers with which to start. So how, exactly, should one go about collecting this information?

Let’s start with the easiest: utility data. This will most likely apply to your Scope 2 emissions. You can request from your utility provider details on how much energy you have consumed and the source of that energy (natural gas, solar, wind, coal, etc.). You can then use the math around emissions factors and global warming potential to get your metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which is what you want to put in your final report.

If you produce emissions on site, such as by using fertilizer, or a stationary propane tank, this will go in Scope 1. You likely have some of this data internally already in terms of usage, so treat that as your activity data. Scope 1 does include company vehicles, which may be a bit more challenging to calculate, but you should have mileage available in your expense reports that you can then add to your sustainability metrics.

Though it might not necessarily be asked for in a greenhouse gas accounting report, you may also want to include non-emissions producing activity, such as the energy produced by solar panels on your roof. This can give a bigger picture to readers of the report, particularly if you source a major part of your electricity from renewable sources. Knowing when to prioritize efficiency or replacement sources is important for making climate-related decisions.

The really finicky piece is Scope 3, which covers a wide variety of emission sources and thus different types of data. This is so finicky, in fact, that many companies opt out of reporting Scope 3 altogether. This will become risky as regulations become more stringent in places like California and the European Union. Not to mention, for many organizations, Scope 3 is where their largest impact exists. So how does one begin to collect this activity data?

To start with, make a list of all the ways that your company exists in Scope 3. Luckily, the GHG Protocol provides a list of activities that fit within this scope, such as purchased goods and services, investments, processing and use of sold products, and employee commuting. Each of these emissions types will require a different data source. You can decide what to include based on the significance of the emissions source, the availability and reliability of the data, and if there are established, accepted methods to handle this. For commuting, you could ask HR to give you the approximate distance for employee commutes. Alternatively, you could do a company survey. If you have gated parking access, you can view the traffic report of the gate to see how many cars went in and out. You could look at the commute data for your region. There will be some assumptions made to collect this data, so just make sure you disclose any assumptions in your report. A key piece of these reports is how they build on each other year over year, so try to choose data sources to which you will continue to have access.

You may have difficulty getting information for any of the scopes if you primarily work remotely or lease your facilities. Some landlords are happy to provide other information, but it is not guaranteed or may not be available for just your organization as opposed to all of the users of a particular building. If your company is 100% remote, those emissions are going to belong in Scope 3. Take the time to figure out the equipment usage for your remote employees as well as the building emissions that occur while they are working, such as lighting and heat.

There are many software programs available that will make this work easier for you. Ecolytics, for example, is a program that will connect to your HR and financial platforms to automatically collect data and put into metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. Ecolytics can also generate an impact report for you. Software can be a significant timesaver for companies that are committed to reporting annually, and many of them are often built to easily meet regulation or certification requirements, like B Corp Standards. It is worth investigating your options in your area.

Bringing down greenhouse gas emissions is essential to stopping climate change, and we will only have success if we are tracking the data. Getting your GHG accounting into shape will not only allow you to meet external requirements, it can also be an internal driver to do what is needed to improve your company’s impact and help us all to a better future.