White Paper: Event Footprinting

The vast majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories are conducted at a corporate level, however there is increasing interest in capturing emissions from areas that fall outside of a corporation’s operational boundaries but are still related to their core business. One broad category of tangential emissions is event emissions. This paper outlines a clear approach to creating a GHG inventory for events, while highlighting challenges and best practices for this specific category of inventories.

Most companies and organizations host or sponsor occasional events, such as conferences, charity fundraisers, and large working meetings. Other industries, such as sports and entertainment groups, produce regular events that may make up a large portion of their operations. Frequent events for these industries include music tours, seasonal sporting events, awards shows, and movie productions.

An important distinction to keep in mind is that the GHG inventory created for a special event or production will generally encompass emissions that are outside the scope of a corporate-wide GHG inventory. However, there are some cases where the emissions calculated from onsite fuel use, purchased electricity or mobile sources for the event may already have been calculated during the corporate GHG inventory, such as:

• The event or production is located at a company-owned facility or location where the emissions have already been calculated; or
• Company-owned vehicles such as private jets, cars, trucks or other equipment is used for the event.

In these cases, some of the data may already be know, but will likely have to be subdivded to pertain to the event itself. 

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