Senior climate change and energy policy and engagement lead Chloë Fiddy highlights a couple of recent updates on frameworks and processes for professional services providers to understand the impact of their serviced emissions.
It can be difficult for companies in the professional services sector to get to grips with their emissions beyond the most obvious efforts such as reducing business travel keeping IT equipment in use for longer. Approaches to measure the impacts of their value chains has often involved almost a re-invention of the wheel for the people doing the carbon reporting, as they look at how to go about measuring boundaries and wondering what detail to include.
Two steps forward have been made which should make this easier for professional service providers (whether organisations/departments/individuals) that sell a service based on expertise in a specific field, rather than a physical product. This includes consultants, PR and advertising firms, lawyers, and so on. Serviced (or Advised or Advertised) emissions are those from client activities that are enabled by the professional service provider.
The Race to Zero Climate Champions have released a new report: Catalysing climate action: The role of professional service providers in realizing a net zero future which sets out what a professional services organisation can be doing, in a 15-page paper with clearly outlined steps, accompanied by case studies.
Pledge to Net Zero (of which ISEP is a co-founding member) has published a consultation paper on Estimating the greenhouse gas impact of advice and designs: Practical approaches for the environment and engineering sectors. This is slightly more detailed, being sector-specific. It sets out three methods for environment and engineering sector firms to estimate the greenhouse gas impact of their work, each with different levels of details and purposes. A link is provided at the end of the consultation, and we’re encouraging ISEP members to send their responses by March 2025.
In collaboration with Tessa Ferry at the Race to Zero Climate Champions and David Symons FISEP on behalf of Pledge to Net Zero, ISEP recently held a webinar bringing these guidance papers to life and answering questions from attendees. The link to watch again is here.
