How we can help

A helping hand every step of the way

Managing your carbon performance doesn’t have to be intimidating. CSA advisory services can help guide you every step of the way—from preparing your initial carbon inventory to achieving carbon neutrality. You concentrate on your organization’s core competency. We help you build the skills required to measure, monitor and manage your carbon footprint.

Build your team
The right team can help make measuring, monitoring and managing your carbon footprint less onerous for any one person or department. Your team may comprise people with roles that include:

• Property/facility management
• Operations
• Transportation and logistics
• Accounting
• Engineering
• Environmental/sustainability specialist

We can help you identify the right skill sets and roles to suit your carbon performance goals.

Establish organizational boundaries
Your organization may include one or more facilities. Your organization’s total carbon footprint is an aggregate of the emissions from activity across all facilities. You can consolidate facilities based on either:

• Financial and/or operational control
• Equity share (your portion of a shared facility)

We can help you determine your organizational boundaries to allow you to accurately measure your carbon footprint.

Identify sources, sinks and reservoirs
Each facility may include greenhouse gas sources, sinks or reservoirs. You will also need to identify GHG emissions and removals associated with operations, which can be categorized as direct emissions, energy indirect emissions and other indirect emissions.

We can help you identify the sources, sinks and reservoirs—as well as the direct emissions, energy indirect emissions and other indirect emissions—that your organization needs to include in its carbon inventory report.

Manage data collection
You will need to establish a base year and collect data and quantify emissions from:

• Electricity, heat and steam generated and exported and/or distributed by your organization
• Electricity, heat or steam consumed by your organization, but not generated by your organization
• Business travel and commuting
• Transportation of goods
• Outsourced activities or franchises
• Waste generated by your organization but managed by another organization
• Use and end-life phases of products / services
• Production of purchased raw or primary materials

We can help you identify and collect the required data so you can accurately measure your carbon footprint.

Establish a greenhouse gas management system
You will need to select quantification methodologies that minimize uncertainty and provide accurate, consistent and reproducible results. The calculation methodology includes:

• GHG activity data multiplied by GHG emission or removal factors
• Use of models
• Facility-specific correlations
• Mass-balance approach

You will also need to establish and implement a quality assurance procedure for information management.

We can help you design and implement an appropriate GHG management system for your organization.

Prepare your carbon inventory report
You want your organization to be rewarded for all the hard work that goes into measuring a carbon footprint, so it makes sense to publish it through a recognized source like CSA’s GHG CleanStart™ Registry.

We can help you prepare your carbon inventory report using ISO 14064, an international standard for reporting carbon inventories.

Identify opportunities to improve your footprint
Once you’ve established your carbon footprint, it’s time to reduce your emissions with directed actions. Some easy-to-implement ideas include:

• Switching equipment to more energy efficient models
• Performing energy efficiency retrofits at your facilities
• Reducing business travel using teleconferencing and telecommuting
• Changing your vehicle fleet to more fuel-efficient models
• Hosting carbon-neutral events and conferences
• Sourcing local suppliers

We can help you identify suitable emissions reduction activities that can not only reduce your carbon footprint, but also provide ROI.

Take steps to become carbon neutral
Carbon neutrality does not mean your organization has no emissions—it means you’ve reduced your emissions and then offset what’s left with reductions outside your organizational boundary. Reduce your energy use as much as possible, make the move to renewable energy technologies, and then offset your remaining emissions by purchasing carbon offsets.

We can help you source, select and purchase carbon offsets that not only help your organization become carbon neutral, but result from projects that meet your corporate mission and brand.

Obtain verification
Just as your organization needs to undergo an independent audit to ensure accurate financial reporting, you will need to undergo verification for your carbon inventory report. The goal is an independent, objective review of the data.

We can help guide you as you source and select a verifier, and prepare for the verification process.

Visit the rest of the site to get more information or contact us to begin