Worked example: Measuring carbon reduction

In this section we explain how you can use data to measure and monitor progress against the goal of promoting carbon reduction through procurement.

What is it?

Governments and companies are setting deadlines for achieving zero emissions. Public procurement can be used as a lever to drive change by promoting lower carbon alternatives into government supply chains.

This worked example describes how using good procurement data and combining it with emissions data, it is possible to help communicate not only the likely emissions from contracting activities, but also the potential savings that can be expected from demanding lower carbon alternatives.

Why do it?

Carbon emissions reduction is at the center of the fight against climate change. This example provides a methodology to estimate the carbon intensity of public contracts, allowing you to adopt approaches to reduce CO2 emissions from procurement.

Benefits

Publishing good data on carbon emissions has multiple positive effects for those seeking to address their carbon emissions:

Use the data to plan and implement immediate, direct action to reduce carbon emissions from procurement.

Publication and analysis of good data will unlock learning and iteration on what policies and processes work to reduce carbon intensity. You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Getting Started

The immediate priorities for carbon reduction include carbon outputs and other greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and hazardous emissions such as nitrogen oxides. Beyond this, other metrics around carbon reduction include compliance to certification and measurement of plastic waste.

How to estimate carbon values?

Benchmarking carbon procurements

How to gather the data you need?

Analyzing and reporting data

Options for data use

There are a number of different options available to those looking to link procurement data to carbon. These can range from simply identifying a contract opportunity as ‘suitable for low carbon alternatives’ through to requiring detailed information on the amount of carbon saved during a contract.

Below we outline how teams can start to implement these initiatives:

At the beginning of this section, we introduced ten different ways in which you can use data to drive and measure sustainability in your procurement. From these options, we have selected four which can be especially useful for measuring carbon reduction:

Request sustainable suggestions (Option 5)

Encouraging suppliers to detail how they will reduce the carbon emissions associated with their contract.

Forecast contract impact (Option 4)

Estimating carbon values for contracts is a good way to project cumulative emissions and the possible effect of changing procurement strategies. It can help buyers to focus their efforts on the categories with the highest impact. This can also help buyers to set carbon “budgets”, ensuring that suppliers must adhere to a specified amount of emissions during the contract. The data can be used to inform suppliers of this requirement, but also to undertake cumulative analysis of contracting initiatives across government. This approach is best used in a single, well measured category such as energy.

Monitor contract performance (Option 7)

Public buyers can provide information on carbon emissions during, or at the conclusion of a contract. A number of industries such as travel and construction have standardized measures for their emissions and these can be included in any contract performance update. As work is underway to create a binding treaty on plastic waste, these approaches can also be taken to measure use of plastic, specially in sectors that are skewed towards heavy usage such as construction and medicines/medical equipment.

Measure use of certifications (Option 6)

You can use certifications such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to gather information on carbon emissions associated with a product. You can also request the use of other environmental certifications (e.g. Type I ecolabels) and assess their impact by contrasting forecasting and contract implementation data.

Sample indicators

Below are some simple low code and no code options that can help governments to measure the uptake of policies and the likely reductions that are being secured through specifying low carbon products and services. It is also a great way to communicate that you are taking action on climate more generally.

You can use public reporting to:

Carbon reduction