In 2019, we estimated that we emitted 147.5 tonnes of CO2. It was a back of the envelope calculation, taking into account only travelling, food and energy. At the time, we decided to offset our impact by planting trees in a forest in France with Tree-Nation.
This year, we knew we needed to do better and so over the past few months, we reviewed how we are measuring, reducing and offsetting our carbon emissions. We became a member of Leaders for Climate Action (LCFA) and they have helped us measure our emissions and understand levers for reducing emissions. Check this out if you want to get a taste of what they do.
MEASUREMENT
We calculated that we emitted 121.6 tonnes of CO2 in 2020. This time we added granularity to our measurements, for instance, we included details on the class used for travel. Although it includes more emission factors than last year, our emissions are slightly lower than in 2019. This is obviously due to Covid-19 significantly limiting travelling. We plan to add increasing granularity over the years, not because we think it will change the calculated emissions significantly, but because it’s key to fully understand the levers to reduce emissions.
REDUCTION
As part of our SFGS, we have made commitments to reducing overall air travel, promoting video conferencing and attending more board meetings virtually. Alongside this, we found our main source of carbon emissions in 2020 was energy consumption, representing 63% of our emissions. This year, we’ve decided to switch to a green energy provider.
Another area of improvement has been our office recycling system. We reviewed our recycling options and put more effort into educating the team.
