Our Carbon Assessment in 2022
To go further in our approach to climate change, we conducted our own carbon footprint assessment for the year 2022. The Carbon Assessment allowed us to measure the major elements of our carbon footprint where we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
The carbon assessment: definition
A carbon assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a company, product, or service over its entire life cycle. It allows for the quantification of CO2 and other GHG emissions associated with the activities of the studied entity, energy consumption, transportation, waste, and production processes. The carbon assessment thus provides a clear picture of an organization's carbon footprint. The carbon assessment is proposed by ADEME (French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management), a public establishment created in 1991, whose main role is to promote and support ecological and energy transition in France.
By following their recommendations regarding carbon assessments, we first prepared a questionnaire for all employees of the company to gather information on their travel, consumption patterns… By cross-referencing this different information, we filled out this table which is a typical summary of the ADEME declaration (the criteria of the assessment).
By only compiling the positions where one is a sender, this summary can be constructed.
A carbon footprint is divided into 3 scopes that are sets of distributions of different emission sources.
The scope 1 corresponds to direct GHG emissions. Our emission is 8.81 tCO2eq in this scope. There is a significant share of emissions related to the presence of a gas boiler that provides heating to the building during winter.
The scope 2 gathers indirect emissions related to energy consumption. In our case, they amount to 0.53 tCO2eq, or about 1% of the total. The impact is very slight here on the company’s overall emissions.
One area for improvement could be to install photovoltaic panels on the roof and to replace the gas boiler with an electric boiler in order to establish a self-consumption scheme.
The scope 3 includes all other types of emissions.
The transport is a primary impact area for K-LC. It accounts for 27% of total emissions, divided between business travel and commuting. We anticipate a reduction in GHG emissions. Like the main sources, services and the purchase of materials represent roughly a quarter of K-LC's carbon footprint. However, the calculation of their emissions is less precise than for other areas as it relies on general factors from each sector.
K-LC being a company focused in the digital field, part of its emissions is centered on this area. They are divided here between:
IT equipment
Digital usage by employees (based on employee questionnaires)
Data hosting on servers
Rental of various licenses
Telecommunications
Usage of sold products
Our applications are designed to assist in decarbonization but have their own digital carbon footprints. To go further, we plan to engage in an eco-design approach for our applications. In our case, the carbon footprint has proven to be revealing; indeed, it is the starting point for monitoring the changes in different areas. We were able to establish an action plan aimed at reducing the highest emission sources. A collaborative workshop was also held during which each collaborator could share their opinions on the measures impacting the GHG emissions of the company's activities, measures that generally aligned with the actions listed in the carbon footprint.
