Absolute Emissions vs Carbon Intensity Targets

Emission reduction targets are essential if we’re to keep global temperature rise to a minimum. Teams with targets are more likely to achieve emissions reduction, mainly because it makes decision-making clearer. But what type of targets to set? There are two types: Absolute Emissions and Carbon Intensity targets. They can be very different whilst sounding quite similar. Both are relevant, useful and have their shortcomings too, so let's dive in...

1. Absolute Emissions (nothing to do with vodka)

Absolute emissions are your total emissions. They usually grow as your company grows. An absolute emissions reduction target involves reducing the total amount of greenhouse gases your company emits.

For example: our (fictional) company has a total annual carbon footprint of 100 tonnes of CO2e. We set ourselves the target of reducing absolute (total) emissions by 10% each year until we only emit 10 tonnes of CO2e per year.

2. Carbon Intensity

Carbon intensity tracks the amount of greenhouse gases you emit per unit of output or per specific activity (per unit sold / customer / employee / £ of revenue etc).

If our company has a total annual carbon footprint of 100 tonnes and we have 100 customers, the carbon intensity is 1 tonne of CO2e per customer per year. If we set a target to reduce our carbon intensity by 90% this means our goal is to emit no more than 0.1 tonnes of CO2e per customer per year.

This allows for our company to grow, so if our company gains twice as many customers by the time we have reduced by 90%, our total company emissions will be 20 tonnes of CO2e (0.1 tonnes x 200 customers).

The pros and cons of absolute emissions targets

👍 Measuring absolute emissions is brilliant for full picture transparency and accountability. Reduction of overall emissions is also crucially what the world needs.

👎 That said, it lacks nuance since it fails to take efficiencies into account or recognise if your company makes emissions reductions but also grows in the same year. It is also ineffective for comparing companies of different sizes.

The pros and cons of measuring carbon intensity

👍 Carbon intensity is useful for evaluating the effectiveness of carbon reduction efforts, benchmarking companies against each other and is helpful for reporting progress.

👎 However, it only paints a partial picture as it can hide increased absolute emissions if your company grows. It’s therefore less transparent and can favour larger companies who benefit from economies of scale.

What should you do if you have not yet set company reduction targets?

Our advice would be to measure your total Scope 1 & 2 emissions and set absolute reduction targets for these.

For Scope 3, use an intensity target, and aim to reduce these emissions per customer (or £ of revenue / employee, etc) each year.

Here’s an article that explains the different scopes.

Examples of targets by companies you know: 

• Google: aims to reduce absolute emissions by 4.5% each year 👏

• Easyjet: aims to reduce (intensity) emissions per customer by 2.5% each year. BUT they are simultaneously growing by about 8% year on year, meaning that whilst they are becoming more carbon efficient, their total (absolute) emissions are increasing.

Give us a shout if you have any questions.