Counting carbon emissions is messy, complicated and imperfect. But it’s a start, and not one that any business – or nation – can afford not to make. 

“You can’t let the lack of good data stop you from starting,” says Austin Hansell, the remarkably energetic carbon product manager of Toitū, a New Zealand company that certifies businesses that are low carbon. She’s walking me through the process of how a business might reduce carbon emissions through the various certification programmes Toitū offers; hundreds of companies, in New Zealand and beyond, have signed up. 

Hansell and Toitū focus on what is possible now because the problem they face is an urgent one. Carbon dioxide emissions are rising around the world despite increasing and frightening evidence of climate crisis. “We have seven years to cut emissions,” says Hansell, referring to Aotearoa’s pledge to halve emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 – so she’s working to support organisations meet stringent requirements to reduce their individual emissions. 

Climate collapse is the big picture. But the small picture is programmes like Toitū, which deal with the admin of going through a business’s operations so that their emissions – and reductions – can be audited. The way a business keeps track of its emissions isn’t so very different from how a country might do the same on a larger scale. 

The first challenge is finding the data. Businesses are used to keeping track of income and expenses, and this financial data is a good place to start: for instance, Hansell says there’s a simple calculation for how much carbon is generated by using electricity, so it’s as easy as putting in electricity use and receiving a carbon equivalent emissions number. Other budget lines, like food or petrol purchased, are also straightforward. “We’re the certifier, but the business – usually their accounts team – has to do the mahi. We stay impartial and independent.”

Examining budgets for potential emissions like this is a start, but then it gets harder: what emissions might business operations be contributing to indirectly? “We have some knowledge, but not the full picture,” Hansell says. “We’re all contained by infrastructure.” Despite the best methods, there is some inexactitude; emissions for some kinds of activity, such as using a courier service, are calculated with complex models that make some assumptions about business activity; a cup of coffee is given an average emission, rather than one that distinguishes between, say, coffee grown in Ethiopia or Brazil. 

Hansell uses the example of commuting as a source of emissions that’s aren’t clear cut. You might know where your employees live and how far they travel to work; it’s quite possible to ask everyone to fill in a survey once a year describing their main form of transport. But what if the bus they take is sometimes electric and sometimes diesel? The distance might be a constant but 14 kilometres of driving produces a different amount of emissions in slow traffic, so time of day and direction has to be taken into account too – and that’s without getting into the varying efficiencies of different kinds of cars and fuels; even electric vehicles have created specific emissions in their production and in the electricity they use.

 And then there’s the emissions of working from home – how do you calculate energy use in an employee’s house while they undertake work activities? “The business is responsible for all those emissions, but it’s hard to get precise data,” says Hansell. 

The quandary of individual businesses is  echoed on a larger scale by countries trying to count carbon. For example, the UK’s emissions are beneath 1990 levels, but this is in part due to huge amounts of energy intensive manufacturing moving overseas. The individual business process that Toitū takes part in tries to take into account the organisation’s entire system, but layers of globalised labour make this opaque too; an outdoor company contracting manufacturing to China might struggle to find details of the places where their factory’s raw materials come from. 

But although this knowledge might be complicated to obtain, it’s not impossible, and acquiring the data  can even work to help other organisations change their practices. “You have to build relationships with your partners, reach out and ask for data,” says Hansell. A Toitū accreditation has to be regularly audited, the process improved as the business receives more data. With the knowledge of where emissions are coming from comes the opportunity to reduce those emissions, or offset when necessary. Toitū even has an accreditation for carbon positive businesses, which take more carbon out of the atmosphere than they produce (only one business has qualified so far). 

Counting carbon is clearly a lot of work, a significant investment of resources by any organisation trying to qualify. While Hansell points out that reducing emissions can help businesses be more efficient, it’s still an expensive prospect, so why do they bother? 

“There’s money in green markets, obviously, organisations jump on it and try to show that they’re following the green narrative,” says Michaela Balzarova, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury who specialises in sustainable businesses. “And a common denominator is [thinking] it’s the right thing to do for the values of the company.”

Stamps like Toitū’s carbon marks help a business promote itself to its consumers as environmentally friendly. But there’s a risk to this, too: consumers lose trust if publicised environmental efforts don’t stack up. “Sometimes company’s just tick the box and move on – there can be a reputational impact if advertised [green initiatives] aren’t credible,” Balzarova says. 

It’s easy to be cynical about the sincerity of a private company’s efforts to make their work generate less carbon. It’s even easier, perhaps, to be cynical about the concept of a carbon footprint at all; the idea was first popularised by oil giant BP arguably to diminish their responsibility for carbon collapse. Hansell tells me that Toitū is thoughtful about who they work with – they don’t want the integrity of their “net carbon zero” and “carbon reduce” certifications diminished by companies that aren’t really trying, but they do certify several airports, car companies, and ports – arguably all businesses which depend on burning carbon to make a profit. 

“The airports can set up electric generators or set up solar farms nearby,” says Hansell; their operations can be zero carbon, even if their business is not, as it’s the airlines which burn the carbon. In the future there might be electric planes or other sustainable fuels. “Most of us aren’t willing to say that we won’t fly, so we can start here for system change.” 

Picking carbon emissions rather than other indications of sustainability is simple because – despite imperfect data – the numbers are quantifiable. “We put everything in one number, in one unit, and that’s carbon – it’s a very singular approach,” says Balzarova. Instead of just focusing on reducing carbon emissions, she says, businesses that wish to be sustainable need to think strategically and long-term about what doing business in increasingly unpredictable and extreme climates and disrupted supply chains will look like. “Future-proofing means knowing what are the risks, what are our supply chains, will we still have access to markets, will there be more demand.” 

Despite this, in a carbon-based economy most businesses will have to burn carbon; if government programmes to reduce emissions aren’t going fast or far enough, at least some private organisations are stepping in. The more obviously carbon-producing businesses, such as airports, will feel the effects of climate change too; Hansell points out that many of Aotearoa’s airports are on low-lying land near the ocean and could be impacted by sea level rise. Toitū’s certification programmes encourage businesses to think about adaptation to global heating as well as reducing emissions. 

Hansell knows that carbon reduction and offset programmes have limitations. But at least they’re a start. “We just can’t consume at the rate we’re currently consuming; we need to treat our resources like we’re living in a limited system, and design for circularity,” she says. “The cost of inaction – the social and health costs, as well as financial – means there’s a good business case to act now.”