Methodology for Carbon Footprint Calculation Towards Sustainable Innovation in Intangible Assets

Abstract

Calculating the carbon footprint is fundamental to understand how an organization's activities impact global sustainability. The main challenge is how to calculate it when environmental aspects are intangible assets. The present paper investigates in what ways the environmental effects of 13 aspects in relation with R&D activities in an applied research center could contribute to sustainable development. For this purpose, we described methodology to routinely measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and calculate the carbon footprint (CF) of all research activities related to intangible assets (R&D projects, researchers' knowledge and software libraries) with real-time data being provided. Selection of conversion factors to express all GHG emissions are described, in particular those related to air travel on account of its greatest contribution to CF. In addition, these data were used as a factor in assessing the environmental impact of the center, under ISO 14001. As a result, our center can manage its CF and make decisions about how to enhance sustainability awareness at all levels of the organization and gradually improve CF data, of which the main contributors were transportation and travel (66.4%) and electricity (33.1%) in 2018.

Carbon footprint evaluation of local dwellings in Bangladesh towards low carbon society

“…But regional sociocultural factors may stimulate fluctuation of a CF scenario for local dwellings in Bangladesh. Thus, developing an adaptive model of CF analysis is essential for a more accurate result and analysis (Loyarte-López, 2020; Jensen, 2012). Therefore, the adaptive model accommodating critical regional and human factors that impact CF assessment can be one of the key future research directions (Figure 4).…”

Environmental Skills Gaps in Tourism and Hospitality Organisations

“…Arguably tourists need to have a more comprehensive understanding of how their holiday contributes to carbon emissions and actions which can be taken to reduce their carbon footprint. The skills of employees to calculate carbon emissions of a business and disseminate that information honestly to their customers should become standard practice in the supply chain to help influence consumer choices based on environmental performance (Loyarte-López et al, 2020).…”

Natural Carbon Sinks Linked to Pastoral Activity in S Spain: A Territorial Evaluation Methodology for Mediterranean Goat Grazing Systems

“…These farms are under contrasted climate conditions and associated with different protected natural areas and showing different degrees of use of the territory (Figure 2). The associated plant C sinks were assessed in situ to a detailed scale by applying the methodology described by Muñoz-Vallés et al [19]. Results would serve as control values in comparison with those obtained through the application of the C sink databases developed from SIGPAC and SIOSE.…”

“…CF calculations may theoretically consider C sequestration to obtain net values of emissions. Nevertheless, the difficulty and complexity of such measurements have resulted in a lack of the inclusion of C sink data in most of the published results concerning CF for the livestock sector [8,12,[17][18][19] and references there cited, thus providing a biased view of the problem.…”