Any organisation looking to cut its contribution to global warming needs to know the scale - and the sources - of the greenhouse gas emissions it is responsible for.
Many companies can now measure their energy consumption by analysing factors such as the buildings they use, and the business travel they rack up. However, this does not tell the whole story.
'Typically, most of a company's carbon footprint is contained in the embodied carbon from the goods and services it purchases,' says Paul Brockway, senior consultant with Arup, the global engineering and design business.
With these supply-chain emissions in mind, Arup has created a new carbon measurement and management tool called Beacon.
'[It] was created as a means for large organisations to measure and manage [their supply-chain] carbon emissions,' says Brockway. 'The Beacon model uses world-leading carbon factors for 57 sectors in each of 94 individual countries covering 98 per cent of world GDP.'
The breadth and quality of data available to Beacon, he adds, 'means that we can calculate a robust and credible total carbon footprint for any organisation anywhere in the world.'