Carbon Tracking

We use excel to gather data and then use the Climate Registry to polish off the final carbon footprint data. We used a consultant, Mike Stopka, of MIST Consulting and now at Buro Happold to help with the initial guidance. There are grey zones and boundary issues to work through. Rand Rand Ekman, FAIA, LEED Fellow Chief Sustainability Officer Principal [HKS, Inc] 125 S Clark St, #1100, Chicago, IL 60603 +1 312 262 9750 | m +1 847 420 5577 | www.hksinc.com To send large files, please use my Thru dropbox

SERA uses a spreadsheet tool to track and calculate based on a number of sources. UC Berkeley has also developed a very good online resource for business and home use. It has a well-developed set of defaults that you can override for areas where more granular information is available. https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/business-calculator

LMN uses the Berkeley Cool Climate Calculator that Mark mentioned. We use the detailed version and still have to tweak a few things, notably the printer carbon footprint and some of the other purchasing items. We do (used to do) a commute survey to provide input as well. -Kjell

Beck reports to CDP every year. We have an excel spreadsheet provied by a consultant, and we keep a running "Lessons Learned" log. 

DIALOG is using a Canadian tool, Climate Smart. Municipalities are 'hosts' for the tool and invite small to medium sized businesses to report. We used a simple excel tool for years beforehand, as part of reporting for carbon offsets. We see the Climate Smart program as a stepping stone to the CDP or another reporting agency in the future.  

Kirksey uses an in-house Excel sheet for Scope 2 and most of Scope 3.  We're able to track most categories pretty accurately through utility bills, the state electricity profile, expense reports for miles traveled, employee commutes through anonymized addresses and average emissions factors, and waste audits.  For trickier categories like procurement, we use the Berkley CoolClimate Network Business Calculator as a starting point and make adjustments to the defaults from there.  We then match that up against our carbon handprint via efforts like our annual tree plantings, which we have a separate calculator to estimate sequestration rates based on tree species, age, survival factor over time, etc.

Hi all,  I'm going to resurrect this thread and ask, for those of you who are tracking your firm's carbon footprint, are you including employee commuting? It seems to be a bit of a grey area. Would love to hear.

Hi Margaret, Yes, we include commuting, office operations, office supplies/printing, business travel, and compost/waste/recycling. We use the CoolClimate calculator, mostly with the advanced tab. https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/business-calculator We have yet to attempt a COVID-era office footprint study…but now that hybrid working appears to be part of the future, I’m interested in how we can reasonably apportion non-office workspaces into our carbon footprint calculations. Any good ideas? -Kjell Fro

We currently do not include employee commuting in our carbon offsetting. Mike Manzi RA, CSI, CDT, LEED BD+C Associate Principal he/him Bora Architecture & Interiors Working from home, please use email

Miller Hull does include employee commuting in our calculations. We survey staff every year and ask them to provide their best estimate of their commute from the past year, broken out by type of commute (eg. bus, train, SOV, carpool, etc). Jury is still out on whether we'll do that for 2020's calcs (or if we'll do 2020 calcs at all).