Carbon accounting in 10 minutes

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.salvidia.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Carbon accounting is the process of measuring the greenhouse gas emissions associated with your organisation, events, or products, so you can:

• Understand your impact
• Make better decisions
• Track progress over time

This page gives you a practical, non-academic overview so you can use Salvidia confidently, even if you’re not a climate nerd.

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The basic idea

At its core, carbon accounting is just:

Activity data × Emission factor = Emissions (tCO₂e)

• Activity data – what actually happened
  • kWh of electricity
  • Litres of fuel
  • Kilometres travelled
  • Tonnes of waste
  • Dollars spent on certain purchases
• Emission factor – “how polluting” that activity is
  • e.g. 0.8 kg CO₂e per kWh of electricity
  • 2.7 kg CO₂e per litre of diesel
• Emissions – the result, usually in
  • kg CO₂e (kilograms of CO₂-equivalent) or
  • tCO₂e (tonnes of CO₂-equivalent)

Salvidia takes care of storing factors and doing the maths. You focus on getting the best activity data you reasonably can.

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Why carbon accounting matters

Carbon accounting:

• Makes climate impact visible and quantifiable
• Lets you compare years, sites, events, products
• Underpins targets, strategies, and “net zero” claims
• Provides numbers you can use in reports, tenders, and conversations

Without it, you’re guessing. With it, you can answer questions like:

• “Where do most of our emissions actually come from?”
• “Which projects will make the biggest dent?”
• “How are we tracking vs last year?”

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Key concepts (without the jargon)

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1. Scopes 1, 2, and 3

You’ll see these everywhere.

• Scope 1 – direct emissions you control
  • Company vehicles, onsite fuel, refrigerant leaks
• Scope 2 – purchased energy
  • Mainly electricity, sometimes steam / heat / cooling
• Scope 3 – everything else in your value chain
  • Purchased goods and services
  • Business travel and commuting
  • Waste, freight, use of products, etc.

Scopes are just a way of grouping responsibility and sources, not separate worlds. For a deeper dive, see Scopes 1, 2, and 3 explained.

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2. Activity-based vs spend-based data

There are two main ways to measure:

• Activity-based (preferred where possible)
  • kWh of electricity
  • Litres of fuel
  • Tonnes of waste
  • Flight distance or class
• Spend-based (when you don’t have activity)
  • Use money spent as a proxy (e.g. $ on marketing, IT, catering)
  • Apply “per dollar” emission factors

Salvidia supports both. In general:

• Use activity-based where you have good data.
• Use spend-based to fill gaps or for broad categories.

See Activity-based vs spend-based for more detail.

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3. “Good enough” data vs perfect data

You almost never start with perfect data. Think in layers: The important thing is to be transparent about what you did and to get better each cycle.

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The carbon accounting process (in practice)

Here’s what a typical cycle looks like, whether you’re measuring an organisation, event, or product.

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What kind of data will I actually need?

You don’t need to know every detail now, but at a high level:

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How Salvidia fits into this

You can do carbon accounting with spreadsheets and PDFs, but it quickly becomes:

• Hard to repeat
• Hard to QA
• Hard to share across a team

Salvidia helps by:

• Providing structured tables for the data you need
• Handling factors and calculations consistently
• Surfacing dashboards and exports you can drop into reports and decks
• Making it easier to repeat and improve each year or event

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If you only remember three things

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Where to go next

• Deep dive into Scopes 1, 2, and 3 explained
• Learn how to set organisational boundaries
• Or, if you’re ready, create your first assessment in Salvidia.