Calculating a company’s carbon footprint | Tips & instructions

If you want to calculate your carbon footprint as a company, you can create strategic advantages that go far beyond pure climate protection. This process, also known as the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF), can uncover hidden cost drivers, strengthen your own brand and secure your future viability.

Why the carbon footprint is essential for your company

Calculating the carbon footprint may once have been a voluntary exercise – today it is a strategic necessity. More and more companies are realizing that a precise carbon footprint brings tangible competitive advantages and minimizes risks. It is no longer just a matter of cultivating a green image.

A well-founded CO? analysis is a real tool for increasing efficiency. It often shows ruthlessly where energy, materials and therefore money are being wasted in the company. This transparency is the perfect basis for making the right cost-cutting moves.

The demands from outside are growing

External pressure is increasing noticeably. Legal requirements such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) are obliging more and more companies to provide transparent sustainability reporting. And the centerpiece of this? The carbon footprint.

But expectations are also rising beyond the regulatory sphere:

• Investors and banks: Climate risks have long been financial risks for financial players. A missing or vague CO? report can make access to fresh capital more difficult.
• Customers and partners: Business customers and end consumers are increasingly opting for demonstrably sustainable brands. A transparent carbon footprint creates trust and is increasingly becoming a condition for cooperation.
• Talent on the labor market: Good professionals, especially the younger generations, are specifically looking for employers with an authentic commitment to sustainability.

A general social trend that is here to stay

The relevance of the climate footprint for companies is also reflected in the national climate targets. The latest data from Germany for 2024 shows a 3.4% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the previous year – a clear sign of progress in climate policy. This trend naturally increases the pressure on companies to accurately record their own contribution and communicate it to the outside world.

You can find out more about the detailed emissions data in the review report by the Expert Council for Climate Issues.

Dealing with your own carbon footprint is not a chore, but a clear investment. It not only ensures compliance with regulations, but also opens doors to greater efficiency, innovation and a stronger position in the market.

Imagine a medium-sized production company. By analyzing its energy consumption (Scope 2), it discovers that outdated machinery is the main cause of high electricity costs and emissions. Investing in new, energy-efficient equipment not only lowers the carbon footprint, but also reduces operating costs for years to come.

At the end of the day, calculating the carbon footprint is the first and most important step for companies of all sizes to make sustainability measurable, controllable and, above all, communicable. It transforms abstract goals into concrete actions and positions your company as a responsible and sustainable player.

Define system boundaries and scopes correctly

Before even the first figure is entered into a table, we need to define the framework. Calculating a carbon footprint for a company always starts with clearly defining the system and organizational boundaries. This demarcation is crucial because it determines which emissions belong in the balance sheet in the first place – and thus ensures that the final result is comparable and credible.

Without clear boundaries, the whole exercise is a waste of time. The result would be arbitrary and hardly meaningful. Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel: The internationally recognized standard for this is the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. It helps us to divide corporate emissions into three clearly defined areas, known as scopes.

To better understand the scopes and their contents, it helps to take a look at this overview:

Overview of emission scopes according to the GHG Protocol

This table explains the three scopes for categorizing greenhouse gas emissions and provides specific examples of corporate activities.

Scope	Scope Description	Examples of emission sources
Scope 1	Direct emissions from sources that the company owns or directly controls.	Own vehicle fleet, own heating systems (gas/oil), process emissions, fugitive gases (e.g. from air conditioning systems).
Scope 2	Indirect emissions from purchased energy.	Purchased electricity, district heating, steam or cooling energy.
Scope 3	All other indirect emissions in the upstream and downstream value chain.	Purchased goods, business travel, commuting, transportation by third parties, use and disposal of products sold.

Let’s take a closer look at the scopes.

Scope 1: Direct emissions – what happens at your site

Scope 1 is the direct “tailpipe” of your company, so to speak. This covers all greenhouse gas emissions that come directly from sources that you own or control. Everything that is released into the air locally as a result of your own activities belongs here.

This typically includes

• The company’s own vehicle fleet: The combustion of petrol and diesel in company cars, trucks or vans.
• Stationary combustion: Emissions from your own heating system (gas, oil), emergency power generators or from production facilities that consume fuel.
• Process emissions: Certain chemical or physical processes in manufacturing that emit gases such as methane (CH?) or nitrous oxide (N?O).
• Fugitive emissions: These are unintentional releases, for example from leaking air conditioning systems or refrigerants.

Imagine a medium-sized service provider with an office building and a small field service team. Gas consumption for heating and fuel for the company’s own cars would be the core elements for Scope 1 here. Recording is usually quite straightforward, as the consumption data from fuel card statements or gas bills is available directly in the company.

Scope 2: Indirect emissions – the energy you buy

Scope 2 deals with the indirect emissions caused by purchased energy. Although these emissions do not occur on your company premises, they are caused directly by your consumption. In other words, it concerns the energy that you purchase from external suppliers.

Specifically, these are:

• Purchased electricity
• Purchased district heating
• Steam or cooling energy

This category is extremely important for most companies, as electricity consumption often accounts for a considerable chunk of the overall carbon footprint. The good news is that this is precisely where it is often possible to take quick and effective action. Switching to a certified green electricity provider can significantly reduce these emissions in one fell swoop.

A crucial practical tip: When collecting data, make sure to distinguish between the location-based approach (average factor of the national electricity mix) and the market-based approach (specific factor of your electricity provider). The GHG Protocol recommends reporting both values. This creates maximum transparency and credibility.

Scope 3: All other indirect emissions – thinking outside the box

And then comes Scope 3, which is the most comprehensive and, to be honest, often the trickiest area. It includes all other indirect emissions that occur in your company’s upstream and downstream value chain. You do not have direct control over these emissions, but they are caused by your business activities.

The following infographic makes it clear why Scope 3 is so important – this is often where the lion’s share of emissions lies dormant.

You can see immediately: Looking only at Scope 1 and 2 would paint a completely incomplete picture.

The major challenge with Scope 3 is data procurement, as the information often has to come from external partners and suppliers. Typical Scope 3 categories are:

• Purchased goods and services: The “gray emissions” from the production of your raw materials and preliminary products.
• Transportation and distribution: All logistics by third-party providers, both for delivery and for shipping to the customer.
• Business trips: Flights, rail travel or hotel accommodation for your employees.
• Employee commuting: your team’s daily commute.
• Use of products sold: The emissions generated when your products are used by the end customer.
• Disposal of sold products: What happens at the end of the life cycle? Recycling or landfill?

Careful delineation and correct allocation to the scopes are the be-all and end-all. This is the only way to correctly calculate your company’s carbon footprint and ultimately know exactly where the greatest leverage for reductions lies.

Establish systematic data collection

The validity of your carbon footprint depends on the quality of your data. If you want to calculate your company’s carbon footprint, a systematic and well-thought-out data collection process is not a “nice-to-have”, but the absolute foundation. Without reliable figures, even the best calculation method remains just a rough estimate.

The first step is to identify the relevant data sources in your company. Remember: every activity that consumes energy or requires resources is a potential source of emissions. The necessary information is often already available, but is usually scattered across different departments.

Typical data sources include:

• Energy consumption: Electricity, gas and district heating bills that you receive directly from your supplier.
• Vehicle fleet: fuel card statements, logbooks or the amount of fuel purchased directly (in liters).
• Business trips: Travel expense reports documenting air miles, rail miles and hotel nights.
• Purchasing: Invoices for purchased materials, raw materials and external services.
• Waste management: Records of the amount and type of waste disposed of.

Primary data vs. secondary data

When collecting data, you will come across two types of information: Primary data and secondary data. Understanding this difference is crucial to the accuracy of your balance sheet.

Primary data is activity-specific data that is measured directly in your company or by your direct partners. It is the gold standard because it reflects your actual consumption. A perfect example: the exact amount of diesel in liters that your fleet has consumed in a year.

Secondary data, on the other hand, are general or industry-specific average values and estimates from scientific databases. They are used when primary data cannot be collected or can only be collected with disproportionate effort. A classic case would be the estimation of emissions from employee commuting based on average distances.

Practical tip: Always start by collecting primary data wherever possible. Document transparently when and why you had to resort to secondary data. This approach increases the credibility of your corporate carbon footprint (CCF) enormously.

Define internal processes and responsibilities

A one-off data collection is a good start, but sustainable carbon accounting requires fixed processes. Appoint a responsible person or a small team (e.g. a sustainability officer) to manage and coordinate the process.

Those responsible should define clear responsibilities:

• Who supplies which data? The accounting department supplies invoices, fleet management supplies the fuel data and the HR department supplies the travel expenses.
• In which format? Define standardized formats, for example Excel tables, to facilitate later evaluation.
• Until when? Set clear deadlines for data delivery, ideally quarterly or annually.

Data gaps are often a major hurdle. For example, if you do not have the exact electricity consumption for a month, you can extrapolate the value from previous months or the same month of the previous year. The only important thing is that you document every assumption and every estimate properly.

Software tools for efficient data collection

While small companies can get off to a good start with Excel spreadsheets, these quickly reach their limits. The manual effort is high and the susceptibility to errors increases with the amount of data. Specialized software solutions can simplify the process considerably here.

Modern tools offer decisive advantages:

1. Automation: Many systems can be connected directly to your accounting software or other data sources to import consumption data automatically.
2. Accuracy: The software draws on current and verified emission factor databases and thus minimizes calculation errors.
3. Centralization: All data is collected in one place, which makes collaboration within the team and subsequent reporting much easier.

A medium-sized manufacturer that previously spent weeks collecting data manually in spreadsheets was able to reduce the time required by over 70% by using a software solution. At the same time, the accuracy of Scope 3 data collection increased, as the tool provided industry-specific average values for purchased materials that could previously only be roughly estimated. A solid data collection process is therefore the crucial groundwork for being able to calculate your company’s carbon footprint with real reliability.

Calculating the CO2 footprint in practice

As soon as your data has been properly recorded, the most exciting part begins: the actual calculation. You now have a long list of consumption figures. The next step is to convert these into a common, comparable currency – the so-called CO? equivalents (CO?e). This is necessary because different greenhouse gases such as methane (CH?) or nitrous oxide (N?O) have a different impact on the climate.

The basic formula for calculating your company’s carbon footprint is surprisingly simple:

Consumption data × emission factor = CO? equivalents (CO?e)

However, the real challenge is in the detail. More precisely: in the selection of the right emission factor. This factor is the key that translates your activity data (such as liters of diesel or kilowatt hours of electricity) into the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.

Finding the right emission factors

An emission factor indicates how many greenhouse gases are released per unit of activity, for example kilograms of CO?e per liter of gasoline. The quality of your balance sheet depends crucially on how accurate and up-to-date these factors are. Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.

There are several recognized and publicly accessible databases that provide reliable emission factors:

• Federal Environment Agency (UBA): The first port of call for companies operating in Germany. The UBA regularly publishes current emission factors for the German energy and electricity mix.
• DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs): The British government’s database is highly recognized internationally. It offers a huge selection of factors, including for global supply chains.
• ecoinvent: An extremely comprehensive, scientific database that is often used for detailed life cycle analyses (LCAs). It is subject to a charge, but offers an unrivaled level of detail for very specific analyses.

For most companies, a combination of UBA and DEFRA data is absolutely sufficient for a solid balance sheet.

Calculation examples from business practice

Let’s make it concrete. Using two typical examples, you can see how the formula is applied in practice.

Example 1: Vehicle fleet (Scope 1)

A consulting firm has a fleet of vehicles that consumed 20,000 liters of diesel last year.

1. Consumption data: 20,000 liters of diesel
2. emission factor: A look at the UBA database provides a factor of approx. 2.65 kg CO?e per liter of diesel.
3. Calculation: 20,000 liters × 2.65 kg CO?e/liter = 53,000 kg CO?e
4. Conversion: To make the figure more manageable, we convert it into tons: 53,000 kg ÷ 1,000 = 53 tons of CO?e.

These 53 tons of CO?e flow directly into the company’s Scope 1 balance sheet.

Example 2: Office electricity consumption (Scope 2)

A software company purchased 150,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity for its office building in the same period. It is important to know the specific electricity mix here.

1. Consumption data: 150,000 kWh electricity
2. emission factor: We use the current emission factor for the German electricity mix from the UBA. This is around 0.35 kg CO?e per kWh (as of 2023, the value may change annually).
3. Calculation: 150,000 kWh × 0.35 kg CO?e/kWh = 52,500 kg CO?e
4. Conversion: This corresponds to 52.5 tons of CO?e.

These 52.5 tons of CO?e are the contribution of electricity consumption to the Scope 2 balance.

An important practical note: If your company purchases certified green electricity, the so-called market-oriented emission factor for this can be zero. However, this must be shown transparently in the report.

Combine results and form the CCF

Once you have carried out these calculations for all relevant emission sources in all three scopes, the results are simply added together. The sum of the carbon emissions from Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 gives you your total corporate carbon footprint (CCF).

This total figure is more than just an indicator. It is the starting point for targeted reduction measures and shows you where the greatest leverage lies in your company. The efforts of German industry to reduce emissions show that such measures are effective. In 2023, CO emissions in Germany fell to a record low, although this was also due to declines in production in energy-intensive sectors. You can find out more about the background to this development at Agora Energiewende.

The calculation is a crucial step, but the process does not end here. It’s about understanding the numbers and drawing the right conclusions. If you would like more detailed instructions, you can find more valuable information on calculating your carbon footprint in our guide.

Derive and implement effective reduction measures

A fully calculated carbon footprint is not a document for the drawer. Rather, it is the starting signal for real, active climate protection. The figures alone do not change anything – it is the actions that follow that make the difference. The process of calculating your company’s carbon footprint therefore leads directly to the strategic planning of reduction measures.

The first logical step is a so-called hot-spot analysis. This is where you examine your newly created balance sheet and identify the biggest sources of emissions. Where exactly are the most greenhouse gases produced? Is it the direct emissions from production (Scope 1)? The purchased electricity (Scope 2)? Or are the real drivers hidden in the supply chain, for example in purchased materials (Scope 3)?

This analysis is crucial. It ensures that you deploy your resources precisely where they will have the greatest impact. Instead of using a watering can to initiate countless small measures, concentrate on the real levers.

Identifying the biggest emission drivers

A surprisingly clear picture often emerges. For a manufacturing company, the biggest hot spots could be the energy consumption of the machines and the emissions of the purchased raw materials. A service provider, on the other hand, is more likely to struggle with business travel, the power consumption of its IT infrastructure and the daily commute of its employees.

Create a simple ranking list of your emission sources. The result could look like this:

• Purchased materials: 45% of total emissions
• Energy consumption production: 25 % of total emissions
• Logistics and transportation: 15 % of total emissions
• Business travel: 8 % of total emissions
• Remainder: 7 %

With this clarity in hand, you can now start to develop concrete and effective measures that target precisely these hot spots.

Concrete measures for typical hot spots

There are tried and tested solutions for the largest sources of emissions that have proven themselves time and again in practice. Let’s take a look at a few examples for different areas.

Energy efficiency and switching to renewables
This is often one of the quickest and most economical levers. Switching to certified green electricity can reduce Scope 2 emissions to practically zero. At the same time, investments in modern, energy-efficient systems not only reduce CO emissions, but also operating costs.

Material efficiency and circular economy
If purchased materials make up a large chunk, there is enormous potential here. Check alternative suppliers with a demonstrably lower carbon footprint or materials from recycled sources. Switching to a circular model where products and materials are reused or recycled is a progressive approach that deeply embeds sustainability in the company.

Optimizing logistics and mobility
There is a whole host of possibilities here:

• Route optimization: Smart route planning for your own fleet or contracted haulage companies directly saves fuel and emissions.
• Converting the fleet: The gradual switch to electric vehicles is a long-term but very effective measure.
• Promoting sustainable mobility: support your team with job tickets for public transport, bicycle leasing or flexible home office arrangements. This will help you reduce emissions from commuting.

Set ambitious but realistic goals

Of course, a list of potential measures alone is not enough. The next crucial step is to define clear, measurable and time-bound reduction targets. An internationally recognized framework for this are the Science Based Targets (SBTs). These ensure that your targets are in line with the Paris climate goals – in other words, that they are sound.

A good target is ambitious, but achievable. Instead of vaguely formulating “We want to reduce emissions”, say clearly: “We will reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to the base year 2024.”

Such goals are the basis for a concrete roadmap. This defines which measure is to be implemented when, who is responsible for it and what budget is available. This turns a vague plan into a tangible project plan.

The need for such measures is also underlined by national climate protection efforts. Germany is well on track to meet its 2030 climate targets, further increasing the pressure on companies, particularly in industry, to accurately account for and effectively reduce their emissions. The data shows that industry has already achieved significant savings. Find out more about progress on Germany’s climate targets at GDV.

Ultimately, this strategic process transforms the mere calculation of the carbon footprint into an active and measurable contribution to climate protection that makes your company fit for the future.

Everything you need to know about the carbon footprint: the most frequently asked questions

When you start looking at the carbon footprint of your own company, very similar, very practical questions quickly arise. So that you are not left in the dark for long, we answer the most important points here. Short, crisp and straight from the field.

As an SME, do I have to draw up a carbon footprint?

One thing is clear: a legal obligation for comprehensive carbon accounting currently only applies to large, capital market-oriented companies. They fall under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). For most small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the whole thing is still voluntary.

But – and this is the decisive factor – it is becoming increasingly important strategically. Whether customers, business partners or your own bank: the pressure to demonstrate climate protection efforts is growing from all sides. Today, a clean carbon footprint is often the ticket to public contracts or funding programs. It is therefore less a question of “having to” and more a question of “acting wisely” for the future.

A transparent carbon report is a real competitive advantage for SMEs today. It opens doors in financing, in supply chains and with environmentally conscious customers who take a closer look.

Which tools will help me get started?

The market for carbon accounting tools is huge and ranges from simple spreadsheets to fully automated software. Which solution is right for you depends entirely on your resources and the desired level of detail.

You can start small for your first steps:

• Excel templates: In combination with freely available emission factors, for example from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), you can draw up an initial, rough balance sheet.
• Free calculators: Various providers have simple online calculators that give you an initial orientation. Great for a quick overview!

However, if you want it to be more precise, more in-depth and, above all, more efficient, there is hardly any way around specialized software. Providers such as Planetly, ClimatePartner and other tools do a lot of the work for you. They automate data collection, use up-to-date databases and make reporting child’s play.

What do I do if I am missing data?

Take a deep breath: data gaps are totally normal in carbon accounting. Everyone struggles with them, especially with the tricky Scope 3 emissions that are beyond their control. The most important thing is to be open about it.

There are proven methods to fill these gaps:

• Well-founded estimates: Use assumptions that you can justify logically.
• Industry averages: Use secondary data from databases or industry reports.
• Extrapolation: Extrapolate existing values. For example, if you have consumption data for ten months, you can extrapolate the annual value quite easily.

It is absolutely crucial that you document every assumption and every source clearly in your report. This transparency is at the heart of a credible carbon footprint and is explicitly required by standards such as the GHG Protocol.

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