Linklaters
As a global law firm with 30 offices in 23 countries measuring its carbon footprint seemed like a daunting task. But having overcome that challenge, Linklaters has now set a target of reducing its carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 from a 2006/07 baseline.
In accordance with our Environmental Policy, we aim to address our contribution to climate change by measuring, managing and monitoring our carbon emissions.
In following and implementing our Environmental Policy to address our contribution to climate change, our first task was to measure our carbon footprint.
As a first attempt, we have defined our carbon footprint as
• all the emissions emanating from energy use and employee business travel from all of our offices
• excluding emissions from product use, outsourced activities, waste disposal or the use of our services, i.e. we do not include the emissions that arise as a result of our legal advice.
To collect the activity data, we sent out an environmental survey to office managers. The survey required information about the types of energy used in kWh (combusted onsite or purchased) and the amount of passenger miles for rail, road and air. 50% of our offices responded and the data was collated. Missing data was estimated using averages calculated for similar sized offices. Emission factors for the UK were used to convert the activity data to tonnes of CO2.
As a global law firm with 30 offices in 23 countries, this task seemed quite daunting at first. How were we going to:
• Define our organisational boundary,
• Define what to include in our carbon inventory,
• Obtain accurate data especially for rented buildings and from contractors and suppliers,
• Collect data from all 30 of our offices,
• Collect emission factors for all the different countries?
To overcome these challenges, we relied on the methodologies and guidance supplied in:
• The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Reporting and Accounting Standard
• Guidelines to Defra's greenhouse gas (GHG) conversion factors for company reporting
• Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management.(http://www.wri.org/publication/hot-climate-cool-commerce)
Having measured our carbon footprint, we are now able to set reduction targets:
• In the UK, we have already set a target to reduce our carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 from a 2006/07 baseline
• We are developing a target to reduce our emissions from all our offices and this will be communicated through our Carbon Management Strategy. This year, we hope to publish this strategy and implement it throughout our offices, raising awareness about climate change and help each office launch their own carbon reduction programmes.
• We can also make improvements to our carbon footprint calculation such as getting a 100% response rate from our offices, increasing the scope of the operational boundary, using country specific emission factors and acquiring a third party verification.
We feel that the benefits of understanding our carbon footprint include:
• Improved opportunities for raising awareness about climate change
• Better management of our emissions and improved opportunities for identifying areas where reductions can be made
• Prioritising reduction opportunities for greatest potential savings
• Improved accountability and transparency of our environmental performance