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Challenges With Accounting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Events

Organizations that conduct events, such as conferences, conventions, exhibitions, concerts, and sporting events may not be capturing all relevant emissions in their greenhouse gas inventories. Additionally, the wide variability of events makes it difficult to define a “one size fits all” approach to collecting relevant activity data and developing accurate greenhouse gas (“GHG”) inventories and reduction strategies.

Why This Matters

As expectations from stakeholders for transparency and accountability around environmental impacts continue to rise, organizations that conduct events, such as conferences, conventions, exhibitions, concerts, and sporting events, may find themselves in a difficult position. Those responsible – chief financial, revenue, and sustainability officers – may not be capturing all relevant emissions in their greenhouse gas (“GHG”) inventories, and incomplete or inconsistent reporting can limit an organization’s ability to understand risk, demonstrate progress, and credibly communicate sustainability performance. To complicate matters, the wide variability of events makes it difficult to define a “one size fits all” approach to collecting relevant activity data and developing accurate GHG inventories and reduction strategies. So what do organizations need to do to map data gaps, address challenges, and arrive at more complete and consistent data?

Gaps in Existing Guidance

The World Resources Institute (“WRI”) Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard (“GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard”) is designed to help organizations understand the GHG emissions that occur across the reporting organization’s value chain. While this standard is widespread and useful, it has limitations with respect to capturing the full emissions impacts from reporting organizations that host events, which for some organizations may comprise a significant portion of their operations. The GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard does not provide explicit guidance for developing emissions inventories of events, beyond suggesting that event-related emissions be included in an “other” category within an organization’s Scope 3 inventory.

Lacking explicit guidance, organizations may exclude relevant emissions from hosted events in their GHG inventories, resulting in an incomplete and inconsistent understanding of their operations’ environmental impacts and obscuring opportunities to reduce GHG emissions. By adopting best practices for GHG accounting that prioritize relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy, organizations can develop robust and actionable emissions inventories that include hosted events and achieve greater insight into the impacts of their business activities.

Key Challenges in Event Emissions Accounting

The lack of comprehensive guidance coupled with the wide variability in events leads to practical challenges when accounting for event-related emissions. Event-related activities that produce GHG emissions often take place across multiple periods and many locations, making it difficult to determine which emissions are considered “in scope” and to collect the required activity data needed to inventory the related emissions. Organizations should set clear temporal and geographic boundaries for events and consistently account for emissions from activities that fall within these boundaries.

Events often have unique circumstances, making it challenging to develop a single approach to defining relevant emissions sources. Organizations can review GHG accounting frameworks and reporting by peer organizations to identify emissions sources that may be relevant to their own events. Common emissions sources may include attendee travel to and from events, hotel stays by attendees, venue energy consumption, refrigeration and air condition systems used for the event, production of food and materials used for the event, disposal of waste generated by the event, construction of new facilities for the event, services hired to support event functions, and logistics used to support the event.

Depending on the circumstances, organizations may report event-related emissions under Scopes 1, 2, and 3. Once emissions sources have been identified, organizations should group them by Scope in accordance with GHG Protocol guidance and assess their degree of control over the emissions sources using their selected consolidation approach. Where emissions do not fall under predetermined Scope 3 categories, they may be grouped and reported under an “other” Scope 3 category.

Collecting data related to events can be a challenge, particularly after an event has taken place or where temporary relationships with vendors and other third parties are involved. It is critical that host organizations identify the activity data necessary to calculate event-related emissions and proactively put data collection procedures in place. If high-quality, granular data is unavailable, organizations can explore options for secondary data, such as averages or estimations, to fill data gaps.

Events may be one-time occurrences, and even recurring events may take place in different places or under different conditions, making it difficult to track the impact of emissions reduction activities year-to-year. Organizations that host events under the same conditions each year can more easily track progress toward absolute emissions reductions. When tracking absolute emissions is not effective, organizations can use other metrics to standardize comparisons of emissions event-to-event, such as emissions or energy consumption per square foot of venue space, travel emissions per attendee, or emissions per dollar revenue from the event. Organizations that host one-time events may model business-as-usual emissions scenarios to estimate the impact of implemented sustainability measures.

Moving Toward More Complete and Actionable Reporting

Organizations committed to reporting and reducing event-related emissions can adapt current GHG accounting standards and best practices to develop actionable good-faith inventories. More consistent and clear guidance on accounting for emissions from events will allow organizations to consistently track emissions and environmental metrics over time, conduct more accurate peer benchmarking, and measure progress toward environmental goals.

Continue the Conversation

How can organizations seeking to enhance their approach to event-related emissions measurement, reporting, and reduction strengthen the completeness, credibility, and decision-usefulness of their GHG accounting, sustainability strategy, and environmental reporting across complex operations, including event-driven activities?

The full report from FTI Consulting, drawing on FTI Consulting’s deep GHG accounting experience across a wide range of sectors, “Challenges with Accounting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Events,” examines in detail the challenges, methodologies, and practical recommendations associated with accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from events. In today’s fast-paced world and under the spotlight of events scrutiny, the time to act is now.