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Environmental reporting has a measurement problem that is usually described as a data problem. There is plenty of data. What is scarce is agreement about which numbers represent the thing anyone actually cares about.
The three scopes, and why the third one is the point
An organisation's direct emissions are easy to count and usually small. Its purchased energy is easy to count and usually larger. Everything else — the supply chain, the commute, the use of the product after it is sold — is hard to count and is almost always the majority.
A report that stops at the first two categories is not wrong, but it is answering a question nobody asked.
What good measurement looks like
- A boundary stated plainly, including what was left out
- The same boundary next year, so the trend means something
- Intensity alongside the absolute figure, so growth does not disguise progress
- An error range, because an estimate presented as a fact is a different claim
Measuring in order to decide
The test of a metric is whether a plausible change in it would change a decision. Numbers that no decision depends on are reporting, not measurement — and the effort spent producing them is effort not spent on the ones that would.
