A summary of the key takeaways from a recent webinar on reducing scope 3 employee commuting and homeworking emissions.

Shoosmiths is delighted to be sponsoring United Nation Global Compact Network (UNGC) UK’s series of webinars on ‘Reducing Scope 3 Emissions’.

• When setting science-based targets through the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), companies whose Scope 3 emissions account for more than 40% of their total emissions must set Scope 3 targets.
  • Companies must set one or more near-term target(s) that collectively cover at least two thirds of Scope 3 emissions for near-term targets. When setting long-term net zero targets in alignment with the SBTi’s Net Zero Standard, targets must cover 90% of Scope 3 emissions.
• Employee commuting emissions must be included in science-based targets, but inclusion of homeworking emissions is optional (though advised). When selecting a base year for targets, a company should select the first year for which they have an accurate and representative footprint.
• The following actions may be useful in calculating employee commuting emissions:
  • Gathering the number of full-time employees (FTE) per region.
  • Collecting data on the number of FTEs working in office vs FTEs working from home.
  • Referencing public transport data from the European Commission on Transport. This breaks-down the EU and international percentage averages for bus, rail, tram and metro use.
  • Examining private transport data from ‘Japan Guide’, a tourism website which has conducted surveys on commuting times in several countries worldwide. This is for car, motorbikes, walking and cycling.
  • Calculating average speed of transport, using data from the Mobility in Cities Database.
  • Conducting employee surveys to ensure that company-specific data is aligned with the collected data.
• To reduce employee commuting emissions, NatWest has an EV100 commitment and a home charger partnership with Octopus Energy. Lloyds has developed a carbon calculator to define what colleagues can do to reduce their commuting emissions. Additionally, they provide robust infrastructure and incentives (such as offering the cycle2work scheme) to facilitate employee cycling and electric vehicle use.
• Lloyds’ and NatWest’s approach to calculating homeworking emissions is outlined in the EcoAct Homeworking emissions whitepaper. It is important to define if each employee is a shared occupant of their household and account for this in the calculation of homeworking emissions. Emissions from the following sources should be calculated:
  • Office equipment (average energy consumption is taken from CIBSE Guide F)
  • Heating energy
  • Cooling energy
• To reduce homeworking emissions:
  • NatWest are using Giki Zero to engage and educate colleagues.
  • Lloyds engage their colleagues through challenges and activities which encourage internal discussions about ways homeworking emissions can be reduced.
  • Both Lloyds and NatWest provide advice to employees on switching to renewable energy suppliers.
• Calculation assumptions are continually reviewed to ensure that they best reflect employee behaviour. Assumptions should be organisation-specific and accuracy should be optimised by collecting sufficient data.