What emissions sources should I include in my boundary?

There are a few factors to consider when determining your emissions boundary:

• Organisational boundary: what is the structure of your organisation in terms of entities, parent companies and subsidiaries? Your organisational boundary determines which company operations to include. Typically a reporting company should include the activities of its subsidiaries.
• Operational Control: which emission sources are under your organisation’s operational control? These should be included in your emissions boundary. This is the most common method of determining an emissions boundary, and is the method that Trace uses by default.
  • Operational Control is defined as having the ultimate authority to design and implement operating, health & safety or environmental policy over a given activity.

You could also define your emissions boundary based on:

• Financial Control: a consolidation approach whereby a company accounts for 100 percent of the GHG emissions over which it has financial control. It does not account for GHG emissions from operations in which it owns an interest but does not have Financial Control.
• Equity Approach: where an organisation accounts for GHG emissions from operations and assets according to its share of equity in the operation

It is important to note that all Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are mandatory inclusions for a GHG inventory.