Carbon Accounting 201: Establishing Baselines for District Energy Systems

Sarah Crawford-Theurkauf and Lalit Agarwal continue the “Carbon Accounting” lessons they began at CampusEnergy in February of 2024.

Did you catch Carbon Accounting 101, presented by Lalit Agarwal (EnergyCAP) and Sarah Crawford-Theurkauf (IDEA) at CampusEnergy2024 in February? IDEA is excited to continue the conversation with Carbon Accounting 201: Establishing Baselines for District Energy Systems!

As more and more cities, campuses and communities are requiring that energy providers and users account for carbon emissions, a reliable carbon emission baseline is vitally important for district energy systems to better measure decarbonization efforts and conduct informed conversations with customers, local governments and other stakeholders.

However, establishing those baselines can be challenging- carbon accounting is an evolving field, there are a number of methodologies in the market, and district energy-specific guidance can be hard to find.  This webinar will provide “how-to” guidance intended to help IDEA members move forward with more confidence and more clarity.

In this session, we cover:

• How to differentiate between Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions
• Gathering the commodity data required for calculation
• Understanding and selecting appropriate emissions factors

Finally, we will demonstrate how to leverage the new and improved IDEA Carbon Count to calculate your baselines for you. The Carbon Count process leverages EnergyCAP’s financial-grade carbon accounting system, CarbonHub, to transform submitted system consumption data into verifiable emissions values, and IDEA is pleased to extend that benefit to participating systems.