What is a Full Carbon Audit?

Carbon auditing allows businesses to fully understand their carbon footprint and the impact that they have on the planet.

Carbon auditing allows for companies to understand their energy usage and costs, enabling them to use their resources more efficiently to combat climate change.

Throughout this article, you will find out what a carbon audit is and why a full carbon audit is so important. We will also give you tips on how to conduct a full carbon audit and highlight some of the challenges and limitations related to carbon auditing.

What is carbon auditing?

A carbon audit is sometimes called a “carbon footprint”, but it is a way of measuring and recording emissions from an organisation.

Carbon audits are used to review the usage of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions for one business or building.

This process allows companies to figure out where they might need extra help in reducing their emissions or what they can do to improve their carbon footprint.

What are some different types of carbon audit?

There are two different types of carbon audit – otherwise known as a carbon footprint. They are:

• Primary footprint – this refers to carbon emissions produced by our primary activities (these activities include: driving cars, burning fossil fuels and the use of electricity).
• Secondary footprint – this refers to the indirect carbon emissions associated by manufacturing, and the breakdown of all products, services and food, which an individual human requires.

Why should you do a full carbon audit?

The importance of a full carbon audit cannot be underestimated, and a full and comprehensive audit will be extremely beneficial for your business going forward.

Not only will a comprehensive carbon audit inform your business how it can improve its carbon footprint, but a carbon audit can show businesses if they need to offset carbon, by working with companies like Celestial Green Ventures PLC.

What are the benefits of a carbon audit?

The benefits of a carbon audit are numerous and here are some examples of why carbon auditing will be good for your business:

• You can use a completed carbon audit as a benchmarking tool
• A carbon audit will allow you to create a strategy to improve your carbon emissions – be that in the form of cutting down your emissions directly, or using carbon offset projects, like Celestial Green Ventures, to reduce emissions
• Celestial Green Ventures PLC’s carbon offsetting projects are a great way to mitigate carbon emissions and you will help communities and biodiversity all across the world
• There may be financial incentives to reduce your carbon footprint
• Customers and stakeholders expect companies to be more responsible in terms of carbon output

How do you conduct a full carbon audit?

There are several steps to conducting a full carbon audit, and often a professional will do this for you. Here are the main steps to complete in order to conduct a full carbon audit:

• Step One: Identify the material sources of emissions
• Step Two: Collect data on emission quantities
• Step Three: Turn this data into a carbon footprint report
• Step Four: Assess any potential carbon reduction opportunities
• Step Five: Purchase any carbon offsets – from organisations such as Celestial Green Ventures PLC
• Step Six: Establish a time-saving process to make carbon auditing an easy and repeatable process

What are the challenges and limitations of carbon auditing?

There are a few challenges that you may face when you start carbon auditing, such as:

• Finding that there is a lack of standardised calculation models
• Disagreements regarding which greenhouse gas emissions make up a carbon audit
• Difficulties in collecting accurate data
• Errors in both calculating and reporting
• Difficulties in ensuring transparency and audit credibility

Conclusion

Carbon auditing is, for many businesses, a vital part of reducing their carbon emissions. A completed carbon audit will allow businesses to fully grasp what their carbon emissions are and they can take steps to tackle them.

This could include implementing carbon reduction schemes or utilising carbon offset programmes. However, there are limitations associated with carbon auditing and difficulties surrounding data collection and a lack of uniformity in the carbon footprinting sector could affect the results of a carbon audit.

Salman Zafar

Salman Zafar is the CEO of BioEnergy Consult, and an international consultant, advisor and trainer with expertise in waste management, biomass energy, waste-to-energy, environment protection and resource conservation. His geographical areas of focus include Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Salman has successfully accomplished a wide range of projects in the areas of biogas technology, biomass energy, waste-to-energy, recycling and waste management. Salman has participated in numerous national and international conferences all over the world. He is a prolific environmental journalist, and has authored more than 300 articles in reputed journals, magazines and websites. In addition, he is proactively engaged in creating mass awareness on renewable energy, waste management and environmental sustainability through his blogs and portals. Salman can be reached at salman@bioenergyconsult.com or salman@cleantechloops.com.

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