Your questions answered about Ecologi Zero

FAQs

• How does Ecologi Zero calculate emissions?

  Ecologi Zero uses a number of data sources to produce as precise of an estimation of your organisation’s carbon footprint as possible. The base data layers used are complex input-output tables which produce emissions values for your financial transactions, based on average emissions figures across whole industries. The types of industries where your organisation spends its money – and the amount of money you spend in them – will therefore influence the calculated emissions. 

  Example: You spend £100 on business software with Microsoft, and plug in your finance data to Ecologi Zero. The tool will match Microsoft to its industry (IT software), and take the UK average emissions figure from the IT software industry (which is measured in CO2e per £ spent), and then multiply it by 100, for your £100 spent. Ecologi Zero produces a footprint of 1.2kg CO2e for this purchase – because the industry emissions factor for this industry is 0.012kg per £ spent.

  For the moment, the emissions factors used to make the calculations are applicable to the UK only – we will be adding more regions very soon. You’ll also soon be able to include additional specific data about your organisation (such as vehicles, premises and energy) in order to exploit further data to hone your footprint even further.

• Is carbon footprinting with Ecologi Zero accurate?

  Firstly, it is important to understand that it is not possible to work out an “exact” carbon footprint for anything. Footprint calculations suffer from truncation errors – since the number of factors potentially influencing the carbon footprint of something is (literally) infinite, you always have to draw a line somewhere and sacrifice some amount of ‘accuracy’. This means that, really, carbon footprinting exercises are therefore better or worse, as opposed to accurate or inaccurate. 

  A key shortfall of common ‘bottom-up’ emissions measurements is that it’s so easy for them to miss something. You have to think of all the different things that could possibly be included, and include them, in order for your carbon footprint to work.

  Ecologi Zero works the other way around – using a ‘top-down’ approach. The datasets we plug into Ecologi Zero are extremely large, complex input-output tables which produce emissions values across entire industries. As such, they encapsulate all of the activities within the industry – without having to break down the industries into all their different components to work out a footprint from the bottom up.

  Ecologi Zero produces a calculation of your organisation’s emissions based on the data you give us about your organisation and its purchases. The tool is not measuring your emissions, it is calculating them – this is because Ecologi Zero produces emissions values based on the most up-to-date data we have for emissions intensities of purchases in different industries. Matching and approving your suppliers and their industry helps to make our calculation more precise.

  This means Ecologi Zero is the perfect tool for your organisation, since the day-to-day bookkeeping that you are already doing can be applied to complex, top-down datasets to provide an amazing view of where emissions are happening within your business.

  Very soon you will be able to give Ecologi Zero additional information about your organisation (such as about your premises, energy mix, and number of remote workers) to enhance your organisation’s overall footprint calculation. This step is vital to ensure that Ecologi Zero can provide you with the most comprehensive and helpful information to inform your decisions regarding reducing your organisation’s emissions.

• Why do I need to match and approve my suppliers?

  Your expenditure is a great indicator of your business’s carbon footprint. When Ecologi Zero identifies your suppliers, it can use the amount you spend with them to estimate the emissions for each transaction.

  Our system identifies the industry and country of origin for your suppliers by looking them up in our company database. In most cases this will be automatic, and in others it will ask for your input. This information is then correlated with expansive carbon databases to arrive at the emissions per transaction.

  As this supplier information forms the basis for Ecologi Zero to calculate your supplier emissions, you are asked to confirm that the details suggested are correct, or to enter them if they are missing.

  This only needs to be done once for each of your suppliers! Ecologi Zero will then automatically recognise all new transactions with them, and calculate the associated emissions.

• What happens if I switch to a different supplier?

  If you switch suppliers for your purchases, you may find that the footprint remains the same. This is because Ecologi Zero’s base data layer uses industry averages to calculate the footprints of your purchases – and for two suppliers within the same industry category, this value will be the same.

  
  We are continually adding data to Ecologi Zero in order to produce reliable sources of organisation-specific emissions data, which will mean that over time our tool will rely less on industry averages. In addition, the more organisations who use Ecologi Zero, the closer we are to the data – meaning we can pinpoint the footprint of purchases made with specific organisations even easier. To speed up this process, why not reach out to your suppliers and partners to start calculating with Ecologi Zero?

• Is my data secure, and who can see it?

  We place the utmost importance on keeping your data secure.

  Firstly, only your organisation’s expenditure data is imported to Ecologi Zero – and no other financial data. Ecologi Zero accesses your accounting data as read-only, and Ecologi staff do not have access to your data without your explicit consent. We will not share your data with third parties. 

  All data is encrypted in transit and encrypted in storage on our servers. You can revoke Ecologi Zero’s access to your accounting software and delete your data at any time.