Key Concept¶
Carbon Footprint¶
Carbon footprint serves as an indicator to represent the aggregate greenhouse gas emissions arising from an activity, product, company, or nation, usually expressed in tons of CO2-equivalent per unit of comparison. It includes emissions across production, use, and disposal of the product, service or activity.
Net-zero Emission¶
Net zero carbon emissions refer to achieving a value chain emission reduction scale consistent with what is required to achieve global net-zero emissions by following the 1.5°C pathway and neutralizing the impact of all residual emissions through permanent removal of equivalent carbon dioxide. It generally refers to the scenario where global greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities are offset and in balance with emissions reductions.
Carbon Neutral¶
Carbon neutrality refers to achieving a net carbon footprint of zero. Carbon neutrality is typically premised on the idea of using carbon offset to balance emissions that cannot readily be eliminated.Carbon neutral can cover a defined part of business operations and typically accounts for only CO2 emissions.
Carbon Neutrality Rate¶
The calculated reduction in emissions from the project compared with the emissions in the baseline scenario accounts for the percentage of the carbon emission baseline.
Carbon Baseline¶
A hypothetical scenario for what GHG emissions, removals or storage would have been in the absence of the GHG project or project activity.
Carbon Emissions¶
Carbon emissions refer to the process of releasing greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride) into the atmosphere during business production and operational activities.
Direct Emissions¶
Direct emissions refer to greenhouse gas emissions produced by emission sources owned or controlled by the emitting entity.
Indirect Emissions¶
Indirect emissions are emissions resulting from the activities of the emitting entity but occurring at emission sources owned or controlled by other emitting entities.
Scope 1¶
Scope 1 of the GHG Protocol refers to direct emissions owned or controlled by an organization.
Scope 2¶
Scope 2 of the GHG Protocol refers to indirect emissions from the production of external electricity, heat, or steam consumed by the organization.
Scope 3¶
Scope 3 of the GHG Protocol refers to emissions caused by organizational activities that are owned or controlled by other organizations, excluding indirect energy emissions, including all emissions that may be generated upstream and downstream of the supply chain or value chains, such as raw material mining, production, and transportation, consumers using products and services, etc.
Carbon Intensity Reduction¶
Reduced carbon emissions through clean energy, energy efficiency, and other methods.
Clean Electricity¶
Refers to other clean electricity purchased from the market, or self-generated clean energy.
Energy Conservation¶
Minimize energy consumption and further reduce total carbon emissions through management measures, energy-saving retrofit projects, and system optimization.
Energy Flow Diagram¶
Energy Flow Diagram is mainly used to monitor and display the flow of energy. In the form of a Sankey diagram, it shows variations in energy for different purposes, purchases, self-generation, and consumption through variations in line thickness along the central axis.
Total Carbon Emissions¶
Carbon emissions, or greenhouse gas emissions, refer to the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by various industries and households within a specific geographic area during a defined period. The unit of measurement is in tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Greenhouse gases include both natural and human-made gaseous components in the atmosphere that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation. In accordance with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the six main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs, including CF4 and C2F6), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
GreenHouse Gas (GHG)¶
Greenhouse gases refer to the atmospheric gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Natural greenhouse gases include water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), while others include ozone (O3), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and human-made greenhouse gases such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs, including chlorofluorocarbons HCFCs and sulfur hexafluoride SF6).
Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP)¶
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is a guiding standard protocol for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions from enterprises, projects, or products. Co-published by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, it serves as a primary reference standard for global carbon accounting. Ark supports carbon accounting based on Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.
ISO 14064¶
ISO 14064 is a set of standard protocols that define the principles and requirements for quantifying and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals at the organizational level. It includes requirements for designing, developing, managing, reporting, and verifying organizational GHG inventories. Ark supports carbon accounting based on ISO 14064 Standard.
Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)¶
CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is an international non-profit organization with a global presence in the United Kingdom, Japan, India, China, Germany, Brazil, and the United States of America. CDP assists companies, cities, regions, and authorities to disclose their environmental data, including information related to climate change, water resource management, forest conservation, and other environmental aspects. By collecting and assessing environmental data from these entities, CDP enables them to strategize climate action plans and work towards sustainability goals.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs)¶
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), provide a mechanism to track and quantify the environmental benefits of renewable energy production. Companies can lower their carbon emissions and reduce their environmental footprint by purchasing and retiring RECs that match their energy consumption, through leveraging the environmental benefits associated with these certificates.
Environmental Attribute¶
Environmental Attributes are tradable certificates or instruments with positive environmental impacts, such as renewable energy certificates and carbon credits, of which its associated environmental benefits (green energy production, carbon removal or emissions reduction from environmental projects) can be transferred through marketplace transactions and claimed as an organization’s efforts in reducing carbon footprints.
REC Retirement¶
The act of retiring RECs refers to retaining ownership of the certificate and claiming the environmental benefits as your own, taking the REC out of marketplace circulation. This enables your organization to claim consumption of the associated amount of renewable energy.
You can purchase REC Certificates either directly from the Envision Green Certificate Operation Team or through alternative trading platforms accessible via various channels, for subsequent auditing within the Ark carbon management system.
Carbon Accounting¶
Carbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas (GHG) an organization emits.
Ark supports data aggregation and carbon accounting for emissions, reductions, and offsets within the chosen time frame, depending on the accounting method specified in the view. This includes:
Manual Data Entry:
Input offline or historical carbon emission data manually through batch imports or data entry.
Automated Data Entry:
Automatic carbon emission data collection through IoT and importing into the system in a compatible format.
Integrate carbon emission data from external sources through third-party system integration or cloud integration.
Location Based¶
The location-based method reflects the average emissions intensity of grids on which energy consumption occurs. This method applies to all locations where grids are used for the distribution of energy, where electricity demand causes the need for energy generation and distribution.
Market Based¶
The market-based method reflects emissions from the electricity that companies have chosen in the market or their lack of choice. Under this method, an energy consumer uses the GHG emission factor associated with the qualifying contractual instruments it owns.
Organizational Boundary¶
Organizational boundary is a way of defining the scope of a company’s business activities, organizational structure, and responsibilities. By selecting an approach for consolidating GHG emissions, the organization then consistently applies the selected approach to define those businesses and operations that constitute the company for the purpose of accounting and reporting GHG emissions. (GHGP)
Operational Boundary¶
Operational boundary defines the scope of direct and indirect emissions for operations that fall within a company’s established organizational boundary.
Control Approach¶
The control method is a carbon emissions accounting method. Under the control approach, a company accounts for 100 percent of the GHG emissions from operations over which it has control. It does not account for GHG emissions from operations in which it owns an interest but has no control.
Financial Control¶
Financial control is a carbon accounting method under the control category. If this standard is adopted to determine control, the emissions of joint ventures with shared financial control rights should be accounted for based on the equity share ratio.
Operational Control¶
Operational control is a carbon accounting method under the control category. If this standard is adopted to determine control, the company accounts for 100% of the emissions generated by its own operations or its subsidiaries where it holds operational control.
Entity¶
Each entity signifies an emission-producing operational unit within organizational or operational boundaries, this includes sites, stores, branches, factories, assets etc. These emissions data are aggregated to establish the organization’s complete carbon emissions record once configured.
IoT Data Metrics¶
IoT data metrics refer to business metric data that is collected by metering devices. This data is used by carbon management system to calculate carbon emissions or carbon reductions.
IoT Entity¶
IoT entity refer to an entity node representing logical devices (assets) added from the EnOS device asset tree to fetch metric data from IoT devices. Ark enables the use of registered IoT data metrics for carbon data accounting, such as energy consumption, power generation, gas, steam, water etc.
Centralized¶
Centralized method is when facilities report activity data/fuel use data (such as fuel consumption) to the corporate level, to calculate overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Decentralized¶
Decentralized method is when facilities collect activity data/fuel use data and calculate their greenhouse gas emissions directly using approved methods, then report this data to the corporate level of parent company.
Planned Reduction¶
Planned reduction represents the organization’s annual estimate of emission reduction scenario quantity, essential for estimating annual emission reduction benefits, planning reduction strategies, evaluating goals, and constructing marginal emission reduction cost curves.
Actual Reduction¶
Actual reduction quantity is the total emissions reduction calculated based on the organization’s monthly recorded abatement volume.
Marginal abatement cost curves¶
MACC presents the costs or savings expected from different opportunities, alongside the potential volume of emissions that could be reduced if implemented. MACCs measure and compare the financial cost and abatement benefit of individual actions.
Abatement (Reduction)¶
Abatement, also known as reduction, refers to the reduction in emissions generated by a project, calculated by comparing its emissions to those in the baseline scenario. In the carbon management system, this reduction is achieved through REC certificate reductions and other emission reduction measures. represented as total sum of REC certificate reductions and other abatement initiative measures, calculated as Abatement = Carbon Baseline - Emissions.
Abatement Initiatives¶
Abatement activities refer to initiatives and efforts taken by organizations to reduce emissions and contribute to environmental sustainability, which includes tree-planting projects, energy saving projects, renewable power generation initiatives and more.
Carbon Offset¶
Purchasing carbon credits is one way for a company to address emissions it is unable to eliminate. Carbon credits are certificates representing quantities of greenhouse gases that have been kept out of the air or removed from it.
Carbon Credits¶
Carbon credits offer a means for companies to offset emissions they cannot completely eliminate. These credits are bought by emitters in carbon markets and are generated by projects dedicated to reducing or removing greenhouse gases (GHGs). They represent specific quantities of GHGs that have been prevented from entering or removed from the atmosphere, each credit purchase can be used by companies to compensate for the emission of one ton of CO2 or equivalent gases.
Carbon Credit Mitigation Activity Type：Emissions Reduction¶
Mitigation activities associated with carbon credits that avoid or reduce certain types of carbon emissions (e.g., anti-deforestation, energy efficiency improvement projects, etc.)
Carbon Credit Mitigation Activity Type：Carbon Removal¶
Mitigation activities associated with carbon credits that eliminate emissions (e.g., reforestation, renewable energy projects to replace fossil energy, carbon capture projects, etc.)
Net Emissions¶
Net carbon emissions refer to the carbon emissions remaining after deducting the offset amount from the actual emissions. In other words, Net Carbon Emissions = Emissions - Offset Amount.
Emissions¶
Actual emissions of the organization aggregated from data reporting, IoT data metrics, Bill invoice OCR or 3rd party system integration.
Emission Sources¶
Emission source refers to the specific entities or processes within an organization that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Emission Factor¶
An emission factor is a coefficient indicating greenhouse gas emissions per unit of activity, e.g., CO2 emissions per ton of fuel or per kilowatt-hour of electricity purchased. It supports the conversion of diverse emissions categories into carbon emissions for standardized carbon reporting. Users can customize factor values in Ark with the comprehensive emission factor standards and libraries.
tCO2e (Emissions Unit)¶
A metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) is the standard unit of measurement used for accounting and reporting greenhouse gas emissions.
Dimension¶
Dimension is an expression that represents a derived physical quantity as a product of various powers of baseline quantities. It is used to represent the core attributes/units of emission source activities to quantify emission amounts.
Activity Data¶
Activity data are data related to the amount of fuel or material consumed or produced in relation to a calculation-based methodology, with energy expressed in joules, solid and liquid mass in tons, and gases in standard cubic meters.
Activity Level¶
The size or quantifiable scale of production or consumption activities that lead to greenhouse gas emissions, such as consumption amount of each fossil fuel, net purchased electricity, net purchased heat, etc.
Emission Activity¶
Emission activities are activities that generate direct and indirect emissions along a company’s value chain. In Greenhouse Gas Protocol, they represent the individual emissions activities classified under each of the 3 scopes. In ISO 14064, they represent individual emissions activities classified under each of the 6 categories.
Factor Template¶
Factor Templates are customized templates that administrator users create to host new emission activities, emission sources, and emission factors for organization-specific needs.
Emission Template¶
Emission template are predefined templates in the system that defines information such as emission project names, relevant emission categories, emission sources, dimensions, and emission factor values. It is used by business users to report emission data monthly, simplifying the emission data recording process.
Uncertainty¶
Uncertainty is a parameter that represents numerical bias or deviations in relation to the quantified emissions results. These deviations are reasonably attributed to the quantified dataset. Uncertainty information should include quantitative estimates of potential numerical deviations and provide a qualitative description of the possible causes of the discrepancies.
Reporting and Disclosure¶
Disclosing available data to corporate management and external users (e.g. regulators, shareholders, the public or specific stakeholder groups).
Verification¶
An independent assessment of the reliability (considering completeness and accuracy) of the GHG inventory.
Business As Usual¶
Business as usual (BAU), the normal execution of standard functional operations within an organization, forms a possible contrast to projects or programmes which might introduce change.
BAU Growth Rate Factor¶
The BAU (Business as Usual) business growth rate is an indicator used to assess a company’s business growth development. In Ark’s carbon emission simulation forecasts, future carbon emissions for the company are predicted based on their business growth rate. The BAU business growth rate is calculated as follows: BAU Business Growth Rate = Annual Core Business Revenue Growth (or production, etc.) / Baseline Year's Core Business Revenue Growth (or production, etc.) * 100%.
Target Management¶
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target is a predefined organization-level goal to achieve a specific reduction in emissions by a predetermined date.
Setting targets is a common business practice, much like tracking revenue KPIs. Effective greenhouse gas (GHG) management involves establishing clear and objective GHG targets.
Target management refers to the complete process of defining target specifics and continuously tracking and reporting on target progress. This process involves developing strategies to reduce GHG emissions from products and operations and regularly assessing performance against these targets. This ongoing monitoring helps identify GHG-related risks and opportunities.
Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)¶
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) is a collaboration between the CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). established in 2015, SBTi helps companies set emission reduction targets in line with climate science and Paris Agreement goals.
Base Year¶
The base year for which the organization is tracking its emissions performance on a continuous and realistic basis over the target period, and the base year emissions should be representative of the organization’s typical greenhouse gas emissions
Target Year¶
According to SBTi standards, the target year for the near-term goal is 5 to 10 years from the date of submission to the SBTi, and the target year for the long-term goal is 2050 or earlier; used to calculate near- and long-term goals based on mitigation pathways and business inputs.
Absolute Target¶
Absolute emission reduction target is an overall goal set by a company to achieve a total reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over a specific time frame, usually involves setting an absolute reduction amount from the baseline year to the target year, for example, reducing emissions by 25% in 2030 compared to the baseline year of 2023.