Announcing our new Greenhouse Gas Calculator

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedApr 20232 min read

At GoCardless, we are committed to not only reducing our own impact, but helping our suppliers, customers, and employees in the transition to a sustainable economy. We also understand that climate action and measuring emissions is much like sculpting; you start off with a rough outline, which over time you refine and improve!

But the most important step is the first one. To borrow a phrase: “don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.”

Use our new Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator

With this in mind, we will be creating resources for other businesses that can help them to begin taking climate action and in turn start, or continue, to become more sustainable. This is why we are delighted to share our free-to-use Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator. It is specifically aimed at SME’s but it can be used by businesses of all types and sizes.

Our new Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator will help businesses to get a good understanding of their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol simply by answering some questions that we have put together. All that’s needed to get started is the following data:

Headcount
Energy use from bills
Expenditure information (from travel to insurance)

Click here to access the calculator.

To continue the sculpting analogy; this is our initial calculator, which we aim to improve and develop over time.

Next steps for taking climate action and understanding Scope 1, 2 and 3

We recently published our first-ever Climate Impact Report; an important step in our Net-Zero strategy as it included our greenhouse gas emission measurements across scope 1, 2, and 3. We also attended Cop26 where our CFO, Catherine Birkett, and our Head of Environmental Sustainability, Ben Knight, joined panels with the British Chambers of Commerce and their members. This panel talk discussed the important role of businesses in the path to Net-zero. However, it was highlighted that 90% of SME’s do not measure their emissions due to barriers such as cost, time and fear of getting it wrong. This was a huge driver in our decision to create the calculator.

In case you’re unfamiliar with scope 1, 2 and 3, the basic definition of them is:

Scope 1 = emissions from owned or operated assets (e.g. vehicles)
Scope 2 = emissions from purchased energy
Scope 3 = emissions from everything else (suppliers, distributors, product use, etc.)

You can find out more about Scope 1, 2 and 3 and how they are defined here.

If you would like to join a collaborative community of businesses working together to take climate action, then why not join the >200 businesses in the Tech Zero coalition, an official partner of the Race To Zero. GoCardless is a founding member of Tech Zero and we shared our commitments and goals in an announcement back in June.

If you find our new calculator useful and would like to get a more bespoke measurement of your business' impact, there are some great organisations working with businesses of all sizes to measure and reduce their emissions, including Carbon Intelligence, Carbon Footprint, Seismic, Spherics, and Supercritical.