Mercuria CSR Report 2020 - Flipbook - Page 60
GHG EMISSIONS
We continue to improve upon our existing systems for
quantifying the emissions related to our operations.
Beginning in 2014, Mercuria had reported Scope 3
emissions that were attributed to the commodities it
brought into or exported from the US market. While
this ties to the US EPA’s GHG reporting mechanisms
(particularly in terms of that nation’s imports and
exports), it does not provide the broader picture of our
global operations.
Mindful that the issue of climate change is global and
without regard to borders, last year (2020 CSR report)
we included our first estimate of the Greenhouse
Gas (GHG) emissions that can be attributed as part
of our global enterprise following the internationally
established considerations for Scope 1, 2 and 3 sources.
These estimations provided a good initial overall view of
the company’s footprint across our offices, some assets
and marine transportation, still some assumptions were
made such as the use of consumption factors for most
of the vessels’ emissions, general office consumption
factors, and neglecting other transportation modes.
With this in mind, we coordinated with our operations’,
assets’ and offices’ teams to gather reliable companywide data for a more complete estimation of the
global GHG emissions. This year we have also added
information about our pipeline, truck and train related
information as well as enhanced data relating to our
assets. There are still some areas of improvement,
i.e. in the data collection mechanisms which could be
automated or in a communication platform to share
results with stakeholders. A continuous assessment
is being undertaken in order to accurately gather
information on the company’s footprint on a yearly
assessment, or even shorter basis.
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Reporting CO2 equivalent
(CO2e) emissions under the
GHG Protocol
The emissions of gases contributing to the global
warming of the atmosphere are commonly referred
as Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The main
GHGs that are emitted by human activity have
been defined under the Kyoto Protocol as CO2,
CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6. From transport
and activities, we mainly generate CO2 and CH4.
Other gas pollutants are generated such as PMs,
NOx, SO2, VOCs and HAPs from the combustion
of fuel. In order to classify the GHG emissions,
the GHG Protocol which provides a framework
introducing three Scopes of emissions was used.
Scope 1 refers to emissions that are directly
emitted through the company’s activity Scope 2 to
emissions that are tied to the purchased electricity,
steam, heating or cooling (e.g. electricity used that
comes from the local grid) and Scope 3 to all of
the other indirect emissions that occur in the value
chain of the company – upstream or downstream
(e.g. the emissions of a vessel that was chartered to
transport a physical commodity). The boundaries
were defined, following a control-based approach:
we selected all transportation modes where the
product was owned, all of the assets where we
owned a majority stake and all company offices.
While the ideal scenario would be to measure the
GHGs emitted directly, an estimation is generally
done by converting the energy consumption
(kilograms of fuel, kilowatt-hours of electricity,
etc.) into kilograms of CO2 equivalent with the
use of Emission Factors (EFs). This provides
sufficient accuracy for the data to be reliable.
When less granularity is available, using estimation
techniques such as models or conversion factors
enables to recover the fuel consumption which is
then converted to kilograms of CO2 equivalent.
