Coor’s tool for calculating green house gas emissions

During 2019 Coor started the challenging but important journey to get a complete overview of its climate impact from the company's activities, including raw material consumption.

During 2019 Coor started the challenging but important journey to get a complete overview of its climate impact from the company's activities, including raw material consumption. One of the insights from this study was that calculations needed to be refined and done frequently to enable identification of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as reflect the effect of implemented actions. Coor is therefore creating a tool to calculate the climate impact from greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂e). Apart from scope 1 and 2, Coor will initially focus on three main service areas which account for the largest share of emissions when developing the climate impact tool: Food & Beverage, Property and Cleaning. To assist in this effort, partnerships have been formed with leading experts in life cycle assessment and climate impact calculations such as Position Green, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and 2050. The result will be a comprehensive measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from the company's operations and raw material consumption including an analytic tool that will support decision makers in making more data driven decisions in regards of reducing Coor’s climate impact.

Carbon footprint from Coor's food and beverage service

Coor’s Food & Beverage service accounts for ~50% of Coor’s carbon footprint and has been particularly emphasized in the climate impact mapping due to the service’s high proportion of emissions among Coor services. Food & Beverage is also a service line where Coor has opportunity to reduce the environmental impact through smart menu planning and reduced food waste. The commenced climate impact tool enables analyzing Coor’s emissions from Food & Beverage down to each restaurant and food category. This high level of details enables each restaurant to make menu changes that reduce the climate impact but also aligned with the preferences of their guests.  

The method for calculating emissions from Food & Beverage is based on data from the RISE Food Climate database, which in turn is based on life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis of more than 750 food categories and more than 1500 carbon footprints. The RISE database is unique in extent and the wide use in different user applications for reducing the climate impact. The carbon footprints include detailed inventories of cultivation, animal production and food production.

“We know that many of our customers already have ambitious climate targets, therefore the food we serve our guests not only need to be delicious and nutritious, but also climate smart. This initiative enables us to work with targets locally and invite the customer on this common journey.” says Maria Ekman Head of Group Sustainability. 

Other than greenhouse gas emissions, additional environmental and social aspects in relation to the food industry will be taken into account, in order to make even more conscious choices in regards of food. 

“It is what we chose to serve our guests that has the largest impact and where we really have the possibility to make a change. From a health and climate perspective we generally benefit to increase our share of plant based meals but there are also positive aspects related to animal protein and diary such as keeping meadow fields open to promote biodiversity, which require us to make the right and conscious choices.” says Maria Ekman Head of Group Sustainability.

Carbon footprint from Coor's cleaning and property services

When calculating the emissions from Coor’s Cleaning and Property service lines the method and approach differs compared to the method for calculating the climate impact from Food & Beverage. The goods consist of both consumables, capital goods and leased goods and the fact that the goods consist of many different materials make the calculations more complex. A challenging factor is that there is no complete database for emission factors for goods and services related to Cleaning and Property in the same way as for Food & Beverage. The purpose of calculating emissions from Cleaning and Property is to learn more about which the biggest emission drivers are and how Coor can act to reduce them. In many cases collaborations with our business partners will be required to target reduction of CO₂e emissions from Coor’s service delivery within Cleaning and Property.

Facts

Coor’s target is to reduce CO₂e emissions by 50% from fleet and energy by 2025 compared to 2018. In addition, Coor will also reduce the footprint of raw material consumption from food by 30% per kg food by 2025, with 2018 as a starting point. 

In March 2021 Coor signed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to ensure that Coor’s targets are aligned with the Paris Agreement. During 2021 Coor will assess if the current targets are bold enough, develop and submit targets for validation.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG-protocol): A global standard for measuring, managing and reporting on green house gas emissions.

Greenhouse gas emission: Greenhouse gases are the gases that contribute to global warming. These gases are: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and fluorinated greenhouse gases.

CO₂e- emissions: CO₂e or carbon dioxide equivalents is a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints from several greenhouse gases. To make all greenhouse gases comparable, all emissions, except carbon dioxide, are multiplied by a Global Warming Potential (GWP) factor. The idea is to express the effect of each greenhouse gas in the amount of carbon dioxide that would cause the corresponding global warming. In this way, the effect of several different greenhouse gases can be expressed in one and the same unit of measurements.

CO₂-emission: Refers only to carbon dioxide emissions and not the other greenhouse gases.

Scope: According to the GHG protocol, the company's emissions are reported by dividing them into different scopes. Scope 1 includes all carbon emissions that can be directly managed by the organization (direct GHG emissions). This includes the emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in mobile and stationary sources (e.g. owned or controlled boilers, power generators and vehicles) and carbon emissions generated by chemical and physical processes as well as fugitive emissions from the use of cooling, and air conditioning equipment. Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from energy use and scope 3 includes other indirect emission from purchased goods and services, business travel, capital goods, investments, employee commuting, waste management, upstream transportation and distribution.