Neutral strategy 

The current trend encouraged by politicians and industry leaders targeting carbon neutral status is a much welcomed step towards reducing the human impact on global warming and climate change. In order that companies can all use the same language for Carbon Footprint reporting, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have developed the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting protocol.

The GHG Protocol defines three “scopes” for GHG accounting to distinguish between “direct” and “indirect” emissions, promote transparency and prevent “double counting”.

The GHG Protocol can be regarded as the global standard protocol for greenhouse gas reporting and it is used by the UK Carbon Disclosure Project.

Our methodology

The Neutral Group has split the Carbon abatement challenge into four phases :

1. Assess the carbon footprint and emissions of an operation

2. Reduce all energy consumption and associated carbon emissions where possible

3. Replace brown technologies with less polluting green technologies where economically viable

4. Neutralise the remaining footprint as a last resort using gold standard Kyoto CDM CERs

Combining this with the GHG protocol described above, allows for the creation of a matrix applicable to any industry. The Neutral Group, which focuses on the supply chain industry, subdivides the three Scopes further into Transport, Property, and Operations creating The Neutral Group Carbon Abatement Matrix :