This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

In the past five months, we’ve engaged with approximately 100 of Creative Scotland’s Regularly Funded Organisations on topics of carbon emissions recording, reporting and environmental policies. Through our training programme, we have offered support for RFOs to fulfill the mandatory carbon emissions reporting requirement set by Creative Scotland, which will come into effect for the period of April 2015 – March 2016.

Below are some of the most frequently asked questions from RFOs about the requirements of Creative Scotland’s carbon emissions reporting process.

Will we be judged on the level of emissions reported to Creative Scotland? 

No. We don’t yet understand the level of emissions which result from carrying out your activities. That’s one of the reasons we are asking everyone to report emissions.

What do we have to include in the report? 

We are asking organisations to look at their activities and to record waste (landfill and recycling), utility use (building energy and water) and travel (for business) and calculate emissions from those. Creative Scotland’s reporting form is in preparation and will be made available shortly to help you understand what you will be expected to report.

What level of emissions is good/bad? 

We think that you are more likely to know the answer to that question than we are. After you have recorded and reported your emissions for a year or so you will be able to recognise whether you can achieve reductions. We will try to provide examples of best practice so that you can make your own assessment.

How do we calculate emissions? 

For most emissions sources we can provide emission factors. A simple multiplication will allow you to calculate kg of CO2e (carbon dioxide emissions) from kWh of electricity or cubic meters of water, for example.  We expect to supply this in the form of a simple spreadsheet.

We recommend that you create an account with our ClaimExpenses tool to calculate emissions for travel, as this can be more complex.

Are we supposed to reduce emissions each year? 

We expect that once you begin recording your emissions, you will start to recognise ways in which you can become more efficient, but we also recognise that your activities may change from year to year so that actual reductions or increases may not be a useful measure of improving efficiency.

Will we be given targets?

We will not be in a position to give organisations targets in terms of amounts of emissions. Instead we have been developing tailored action plans which encourage Regularly Funded Organisations to set their own targets for adoption of an environmental policy and for having a system of recording in place in time for the 2015-16 annual report to Creative Scotland.

Do you have more questions about carbon recording and reporting? Feel free to get in touch with Fiona MacLennan, Carbon Reduction Project Manager, via email or by calling us at 0131 529 7909.

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Image: Flickr/Wee Sen Goh

The post Carbon Reporting for Creative Scotland RFOs: Frequently Asked Questions appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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