Our thinking

At your service(d) emissions

11 October, 2024

As carbon accountants, we love the GHG Protocol (the international rulebook for calculating corporate carbon footprints) as much as the next climate nerd. But it has its limitations, particularly when it comes to considering extended responsibility of businesses for the emissions they have a hand in facilitating.

So we were interested in a recent report from Race to Zero on “serviced emissions”: emissions that arise from or are influenced by the services provided by businesses such as consultants, legal advisors, and PR firms. The idea is simple – if a law firm advises their client on a contract for fossil fuel extraction, or if a consultancy designs a carbon-intensive infrastructure project, these agencies share the responsibility for the resulting emissions from these activities.

Serviced emissions is an emerging area of thought, but an important one, because it shifts the focus for service providers from merely reducing their (likely already small) operational footprint to considering how their services can contribute to or mitigate global emissions. In doing so, there is an opportunity for professional service providers to act as “force multipliers”, guiding industries toward sustainable practices.

Of course, we’d argue than any responsible service provider should already be thinking about the potential impacts of any work they choose to take on, something that we at Good Business always do. But we’d be excited to see more guidance emerge in this area to help make serviced emissions accounting (and reductions!) common practice.

By Louise Podmore