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• How to report and disclose organisation’s energy and carbon data?

• By reporting energy and carbon activities, organisations should identify and investigate problems concerned with policy, organisation, procedures and methods, recommending appropriate action and helping to implement these recommendations.
• Disclosure of energy usage and GHG emissions may be required by law or voluntary, and can uphold an organisation’s sustainability credentials, customers’ confidence and attract more investment.

Internal energy and carbon report

Reporting the findings and presenting the case for improvements is an essential deliverable of energy and carbon data collection and analysis.

It is through reporting that the description of the data analysis findings is provided, as well as the rationale for change and the next steps to implementation. It is important to get the message across to the target audience, e.g., a senior management team, clearly and succinctly, as it is generally the information provided in the report that provides the basis for any change.

The report should identify and investigate problems concerned with policy, organisation, procedures and methods, recommend appropriate action to the senior management team, help to implement these recommendations and influence the behaviour change in the organisation.

A typical energy and carbon report should include:

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Action plan/tables of recommendations
• Energy usage/consumption/audit
• Energy and carbon management information
• Energy and carbon reduction opportunities
• Conclusions and findings

Executive summary should be as concise as possible and suitable for non-technical managers. Typically, the executive summary should contain:

• A statement covering the organisation’s current energy consumption and carbon footprint.
• A statement covering the energy, cost and carbon savings, that can be expected if all the recommendations are implemented.
• If there is an energy consumption and emissions target, it may be worth including the impact the opportunities would have on this.
• Benchmark information relevant to the organisation.
• A statement that reminds the organisation of any specific risks, or uncertainties, that might lead to uncertainty in the outcome, for example, if the estimates have been based on limited or missing information.

Introduction should set the tone for the energy and carbon report. As such, it should contain a few key features and inform the readers of what they are going to read in the rest of the report.

It should include, among other things:

• The aims
• The scope
• The sources of information
• What is going to be included in the report
• Any exclusions and why
• Details/overview of the organisation
• One or two paragraphs on site operations, location, age, operating hours, number of employees and some measure of scale that can be used to calculate benchmarks (floor area, number of buildings, production units, and so on)
• Organisational issues that affect energy use and carbon emissions

Action plan/tables of recommendations - it is common for the recommendations to be summarised in a table. Measures can be summarised and ranked in as much detail as the data allows. They are commonly grouped by payback and by scale (no/low cost, medium cost and high-cost items).

Energy usage/consumption/audit - this section should relate closely to the data collection and analysis. Most of the information in this part should be presented in tables, graphs and figures. Typically, the annual energy consumption, spending and the GHG impact is provided in a table and shown by fuel type. The table should be provided with notes which will describe the source of the data used, the time period, the average unit cost in the period and any limitation with the data used.

Other features that are useful in this section include:

• A chart/diagram of the energy consumption breakdown
• A description of the main fuel types and where each is consumed
• A description of the performance against the previous year(s)
• Any aspects that have changed (for example fuel switching in heating or additional cooling added)
• Monthly and/or weekly consumption (generally in a graph format) for each fuel source
• Degree day analysis or cooling day analysis
• Electricity or gas profiles
• Benchmarking; either relative or absolute or both
• Review of electricity capacity factor, power factor, maximum demand, and half-hourly demand data (profiles, weekday and weekend use, time of day use, vacant energy use)
• Review of any sub-metering data

Energy and carbon management information – this part should provide a description of facts and observations, and then provide some form of improvement plan. The following areas are identified as part of assessing energy and carbon management:

• Energy and carbon policy – is the policy clearly formulated? How committed is the top management?
• Organisation – is there a clear energy and carbon management structure with transparent accountability for energy consumption?
• Training – is appropriate, tailored and comprehensive staff training in place?
• Performance measurement – is there comprehensive performance measurement of energy consumption, costs and GHG emissions in place? Is achievement of the targets monitored? Is there an effective management reporting?
• Communication – is there effective communication of energy and carbon issues within and outside of the organisation?
• Investment – are resources routinely committed to energy efficiency and GHG emissions reduction in support of business objectives?

Energy and carbon reduction opportunities - some opportunities may have an impact on others, and so an energy and carbon manager should be wary of double counting or negating one opportunity if another is implemented.

Each opportunity should have:

• an action-orientated heading
• the savings, costs and evaluation criteria
• a description or details of observations
• what is being proposed and the rationale behind it
• what the next steps are to implementation
• any relevant references to support the proposed opportunity.

Conclusions and findings - this section can provide several key aspects:

• Directly answer objectives set out in the scope
• Pull together the opportunities into some common themes (for example lighting or behaviour change)
• Discuss funding options further
• Address possible barriers and how to overcome them
• Re-affirm matters discussed
• Discuss how some recommendations may impact one another
• Provide an insight into how the impact may be sustained.

Public disclosure of energy consumption and carbon footprint

The public disclosure of energy consumption and carbon footprint is usually voluntary, unless an organisation is obliged under specific legislation, such as large UK companies within a scope of Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR), companies listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange or those in the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to publicly report their GHG emissions. However, many organisations use energy performance and carbon reporting in promotional materials, social media, sustainability reports or other publications, aiming to improve an organisation’s image and customer’s confidence or attract more investment.

Several organisations measure carbon emission disclosures. The most popular are the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

Whether reporting voluntarily or under a legal obligation, the disclosure should adhere to the following principles for reporting carbon data:

• Relevance - ensuring that the GHG inventory appropriately reflects the GHG emissions of the organisation and serves the decision-making needs of users – both internal and external to the organisation.
• Completeness - accounting for and reporting on all GHG emission sources and activities within the chosen inventory boundary. Any specific exclusions should be disclosed and specified
• Consistency - using consistent methodologies to allow for meaningful comparisons of emissions over time
• Transparency - disclosing any relevant assumptions and making appropriate references to the accounting and calculation methodologies and data sources used
• Accuracy - ensuring that the quantification of GHG emissions is systematically neither over nor under actual emissions, and that uncertainties are reduced as far as practicable.

Want to know more? More detailed information is available in our online training course, Level 1, Certificate in Energy Management Essentials. To learn more, visit Energy Management Training | Energy Institute.