What does 'Emission Free' really mean?

The Green House Gas Protocol Initiative

An increasing number of organizations, companies, and families are declaring themselves ‘emission-free’. This is especially true in the U.S., where a great number of voluntary programmes have come into being in the absence of legally binding CO₂ emission reductions. That sounds like good news for our planet, but what does ‘emission-free’ mean exactly? Certainly not living or working in a 100% airtight box.

To allow us to see the woods through all the trees and to compare the various programmes on equal terms, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has set up the Green House Gas Protocol Initiative (GHG Protocol).

This Initiative has three main points:

1. The organizational boundary: Do you only count the activities in one building, or also include transport to and from it? Do you talk about one industrial plant, the entire factory or company, or the company group? Are all of the subsidiary companies taken into account as well? These are all matters involved in establishing a clear organisational boundary.
2. The operational boundary: This is the level of physical emission sources and emission generating activities. There are three main concerns:
   a. Direct emissions: emissions released directly within the organisational boundaries.
   b. Utility emissions: emissions related to electricity, natural gas, steam, etc., taken from a grid. Clear figures exist on how much emissions they produce on average and can rather easily be taken into account.
   c. Indirect emissions: emissions that are a consequence of the use of material or of other activities within the organisational boundary but which occur outside this boundary. With the exception of the emissions from utilities, which are in fact also indirect emissions, these are very difficult to figure out.
3. The type of reductions: Reductions in CO₂ emissions can be:
   a. Reductions over time related to a reference year.
   b. Avoided emissions are those reductions compared to a hypothetical scenario of what would have happened in the absence of a certain reduction programme. Given the difficulties in establishing such a reference, the WBCSD advises against reporting using ‘avoided emissions’.
   c. Offsets are reductions that happen outside the reporting boundary, that are used as an offset. For example CO₂ certificates bought on the market or investments in renewable energy projects. Offsets should be at most 30% of the total emission reductions reported. Clearly, if all people and organisations wanted to reduce 100% of their GHG emissions by offsets, we could all happily declare ourselves emission-free, but in practice no actual reductions in GHG emissions would be taking place at all.

References:
GHG Protocol of the WBCSD: http://www.ghgprotocol.org/templates/GHG5/layout.asp?MenuID=849