Carbon Management

Carbon management studies how emissions are measured, attributed to a cause (scope 1, 2 and 3) and then reduced. It works with emission factors, the boundary of the reporting entity, and the question of which emissions genuinely belong to the building or service rather than elsewhere in the chain.

Building-related energy is usually the largest scope 1 and 2 item in an organisation's footprint, and facility services (catering, cleaning, waste, mobility around the building) form a substantial part of scope 3. FM is therefore both source manager and data holder for the bulk of the carbon question.

• Is the scope 3 attribution of facility services based on actual supplier data or generic factors?
• Does a measure reduce actual emissions, or only reported emissions via offsetting?
• Is the baseline year still representative, or does it mask a portfolio change unrelated to any effort?

• GHG Protocol — standard for scope 1, 2 and 3 reporting.
• Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) — methodology for reduction targets.

• Reduction targets that lean on offsetting without actual intervention will not hold up under increasing assurance requirements.
• Energy management and carbon management overlap heavily but are not identical: energy management steers on consumption and cost, carbon management on the emission factor and the chain behind it.

• Energy management and meter data collection
• Catering, cleaning and waste (scope 3 sources)

• Emissions inventory and chain analysis

• Regieorganisatie — managing organisation / intelligent client function

  Scope 3 data from multiple suppliers requires a data obligation in the contract, not an after-the-fact estimate.

• GHG Protocol Corporate Standard; ISO 14064 series (quantification and verification of greenhouse gas emissions).

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Renewable energy certificates (guarantees of origin) presented as physical on-site reduction, when they are an accounting allocation.
• Scope 3 omitted from reporting because it is hard to measure, even though it is often the largest item.

Scope 3 data from small and medium facility suppliers remains scarce and inconsistent; the sector still lacks a shared data protocol that would make that chain reliably verifiable.

• GHG Protocol, Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard.
• ISO 14064-1:2018.