Hi all,
Let me preface this by saying that I agree with Kjell and with Alex, that EC should be part of Scope 3. The intent should be that every member of the value chain does get a deep understanding of their total emissions and their impact hotspots. According to UK GBC report “Embodied Carbon: Developing a Client Brief”:
“[…] In terms of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol for emissions accounting, the embodied carbon of built assets in included within Scope 3 emissions”.
Regarding the double/triple counting topic, despite being a valid concern, the GHG protocol is not designed to be used as such. In section 1.5 “Scope of the standard” of the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard, the following is stated:
“Use of this standard is intended to enable comparisons of a company’s GHG emissions over time. It is not designed to support comparisons between companies based on their scope 3 emissions”.
To my understanding the above phrase does mean that double counting cannot happen as the scope itself is not intended for aggregations. Additionally, under section 5.1 “Overview of the scopes”, we find the following:
“Scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 are mutually exclusive for the reporting company […]. The scopes are defined to ensure that two or more companies do not account for the same emission within scope 1 or scope 2 […]”. Also, “[…] Scope 3 emissions should not be aggregated across companies to determine total emissions in a given region”.
So the double counting issue is not actually an issue as long as we don’t aggregate scope 3 emissions to understand “something”. That being said, yes, we should include EC in scope 3 and do look into our total emissions over different reporting periods and how we can actually reduce them.
Thanks