Creating a carbon footprint is a challenging undertaking, particularly for complex businesses. From collecting data and choosing the right emission factors to managing supplier information and tracking progress over time, this guide explores the five biggest challenges organisations face and how to overcome them.
Creating a carbon footprint sounds simple enough. Gather the data, apply the right emission factors and calculate the results. In reality, it's never that straightforward.
Whether you're measuring emissions for the first time or producing annual reports for clients, there are always challenges along the way. Information is spread across different systems, supplier data can be difficult to collect and it isn't always obvious which emission factors to use.
The good news is that these are common problems. Most organisations come across the same hurdles, and once you know what to expect, they're much easier to manage.
Here are five of the biggest challenges we see.
The first challenge is simply collecting the information you need.
Electricity and gas bills are usually easy enough to find, but what about fuel, business travel, waste, deliveries or purchased goods? Data often sits in different finance systems, spreadsheets and departments, making it difficult to bring everything together.
If even a small amount of information is missing, it can affect the accuracy of your carbon footprint.
The European Commission explains that measuring emissions is one of the first steps towards reducing them because you cannot improve what you do not measure. You can read more on the European Commission's Climate Action pages at https://climate.ec.europa.eu.
Once you've collected the data, the next step is converting it into carbon emissions.
This is where many organisations get stuck.
There are thousands of emission factors available, covering different countries, products, units and reporting years. Choosing the wrong one can lead to inaccurate calculations and make reporting less reliable.
Many organisations use recognised sources such as the UK Government DEFRA emission factors alongside guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. More information is available from DEFRA at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol at https://ghgprotocol.org.
For many organisations, Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are only part of the picture.
The biggest challenge is often Scope 3.
These emissions come from activities outside your direct operations, including purchased goods and services, transport, business travel, employee commuting and waste. For many businesses, Scope 3 represents the largest share of their overall carbon footprint.
Collecting this information can take time because it often relies on estimates or information provided by suppliers rather than data you already have.
The European Environment Agency provides useful information about greenhouse gas emissions and reporting across Europe at https://www.eea.europa.eu.
Once you've identified your Scope 3 emissions, the next challenge is improving the quality of the data behind them.
Many organisations start with industry average emission factors because supplier specific data simply isn't available. That's completely normal, but over time you'll want to replace those estimates with verified supplier information to improve the accuracy of your footprint.
The difficult part is managing that process.
Who has been contacted? Who has responded? Which suppliers are still based on estimates, and which have provided verified emissions data?
Without a clear system, supplier engagement quickly becomes a long list of emails, spreadsheets and reminders. As your supplier network grows, keeping track of everything becomes increasingly difficult.
Creating a carbon footprint once is useful.
Creating it consistently every year is where the real value comes from.
Organisations want to know whether emissions are increasing or falling, which parts of the business are improving and where more work is needed. If data is stored differently every year, those comparisons become another manual task.
Keeping everything in one place makes reporting more consistent and helps you demonstrate real progress over time.
At ecolyptus, we've built Footprint to take away many of these common frustrations.
Footprint gives you one place to manage Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions, automatically matching verified emission factors as you build your inventory. Every suggested factor includes confidence scoring and source attribution, so you can see exactly where the data comes from while still having the flexibility to use your own factors where needed.
You can enter data manually, import it using CSV files or connect hardware and sensors for continuous data collection. However your data arrives, it's stored in the same structured and auditable format. Once your footprint is complete, you can instantly compare reporting years, filter emissions by scope, category or asset, and create presentation ready charts in just a few clicks.
If improving Scope 3 accuracy is a priority, our Suppliers module works alongside Footprint to make supplier engagement much easier. You can build a supplier portfolio, link suppliers to specific Scope 3 categories, send data requests directly from the platform and track every response in one place. As suppliers provide verified emissions data, you can see your overall data quality improve, replacing industry average estimates with supplier specific information wherever possible.
Creating a carbon footprint will always require good data, but managing it doesn't have to be complicated. With ecolyptus, you can spend less time chasing spreadsheets and supplier emails, and more time helping your organisation or your clients understand, report and reduce their emissions with confidence.