How to Choose Your Carbon Footprint Advisor

There are two parts to carbon footprint reporting. The first is the calculation of the carbon emissions for the business. The second is identifying areas for improvement and developing a roadmap to reduce carbon emissions to net zero.

Who is best to assist in this area? 

Accountants are seen to be the starting point as the calculations behind carbon reports are principally based on accounting records. The challenge for accountants is that whilst upskilling to prepare the reports is fairly straightforward, knowledge of carbon emissions, business operations and developing business cases will require significant training that many accountants just won’t have the time, or even the inclination, to do.

If you use your accountant to ensure you’re getting the best tax result, you want them to be an expert in tax legislation. 

If you use your accountant to provide business advice, budgeting, forecasting and management reporting, you want them to be an expert in business advisory services.

If you use your accountant to provide carbon emissions reporting and advice, you want them to be an expert in carbon emissions reductions, sustainability and environmental compliance. Add to that the requirement for social and governance reporting to round out the ESG requirements and it’s a completely different skillset and knowledge that accountants don’t have.

I have tried in the past to combine two key skills and it just doesn’t work. Each individual can only be an expert in one area to do it well.

Mid-tier and the Big 4 accounting firms are developing internal specialist teams to provide carbon reporting and ESG advisory services and will charge accordingly.

The alternative are the specialist carbon reporting and ESG advisory companies where the whole and sole focus is in this area. They have a background working in companies where carbon and ESG reporting have been implemented as best practice, required by law or due to stakeholder requirements. These specialists know how business operations impact the environment and have seen how changes in business practices have reduced carbon emissions.

With upcoming legislation requiring large corporations to report on their carbon emissions, they will require their suppliers to provide their carbon emissions data. This will create a waterfall effect as suppliers require information from their suppliers and down the supply chain the requirements will flow, requiring medium-sized companies to undertake this reporting.

Now is a good time to take stock of your current carbon footprint, undertake a carbon baseline report and start working to reduce your carbon emissions.

We are proud to advise that this article was written by the team and not produced by AI.