Welcome to “Measure your Organisation’s Climate Impact: A Guide for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises”. This course will help you measure your organisation’s carbon footprint.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at their highest in at least 800,000 years. In the 2015 Paris agreement, the world’s nations set a target of keeping the global mean temperature rise to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. During COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, it was revealed that mean global temperature had already reached 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels.

More action is needed, and organisations of all sizes can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this course is to help your organisation measure its carbon footprint so that you can start to take action to reduce emissions. Measuring your organisation’s carbon emissions is not difficult, but it does require some detective work in the organisation’s accounts and records.

The course covers the following topics:

· The international standards for measuring carbon emissions - the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO 14064

· The key terminology in measuring greenhouse gas emissions

· How carbon emissions are calculated

· The steps to calculating your organisation’s carbon footprint

· A worked example of calculating the greenhouse gas emissions for a small business

· Ideas to start reducing your organisation’s carbon footprint

The course is aimed at small and medium sized enterprises, but the international standards, the terminology and the conversion factors used apply to organisations of all sizes. However, the course does not cover the formal emissions reporting requirements for listed companies in many countries.

I hope you will use this course to start measuring your organisation’s carbon footprint.