Sustainability.

Methodology.

It’s important that our sustainability efforts are backed up by real output and methodology - here’s a breakdown of how our emissions are calculated.

Under the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Corporate Standard, the foundations of carbon accounting methodology, a company’s emissions are categorised into three ‘scopes’;

To us it is important that we measure, reduce and offset our emissions across all three scopes so that we fully understand our true environmental footprint.

We work with Ecologi who have consulted with preeminent carbon accountants and climate scientists to produce a methodology which combines two widely used approaches to carbon accounting; combining activity-based and spend-based data.

The underlying methodology used to calculate our emissions is based on The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) net-zero standard. These frameworks are world leading, internationally adopted standards, allowing us to utilise scientific guidance to produce a carbon footprint consistent with global carbon accounting standards.

Activity-based data.

Activity based data is used to estimate emissions for goods and services by multiplying the level of activity (eg. km travelled, kWh of energy used) by an emissions factor (a coefficient that indicates the GHG emissions produced by consuming/producing a unit of a given activity). Emissions factors are multiplied by the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the respective gas to display all emissions in a standardised unit of kgCO2e.

An activity-based method has been adopted to calculate the Scope 1 emissions from the use of natural gas for heating systems (kWh), as well as Scope 2 emissions from purchased electricity (kWh).

Spend-based data.

Spend-based data is used to estimate emissions for goods and services by multiplying the economic value of goods and services purchased and the relevant EEIO emission factors (e.g., average emissions per monetary value of goods) for the relevant industry.

Where applicable, inflation and exchange rate data are applied to align the year/units of financial spend data to that of the EE MRIO emissions factors. A spend-based method has been adopted to calculate Scope 3 emissions.

Scope 1 emissions.

What is included in Scope 1.

Scope 1 takes into consideration emissions from sources that our business owns. This can include during the industrial process, fugitive emissions, leakages from refrigeration or air conditioning units, emissions from vehicles that are owned by the business, and emissions from the company premises by burning fuels or other heating sources.

As a software business we do not emit process emissions, or fugitive emissions, nor do we operate any non-electric vehicles or heating. As a result, we are happy to have no emissions that fall into Scope 1.

Scope 2 emissions.

What is included in Scope 2.

Scope 2 emissions are Indirect Emissions generated on the businesses behalf. They’re primarily emitted as a consequence of generating electricity, which in our case is our employees’ electric vehicles, or electricity for our office.

How we calculate Scope 2 emissions.

Startle employees are able to lease an electric vehicle via a salary sacrifice scheme - this helps to minimise our Scope 2 emissions. Any business mileage is included in our Scope 2 emissions. Total distance is submitted, and total emissions are calculated.

Scope 3 emissions.

What is included in Scope 3.

Scope 3 emissions are generated within a business's supply chain; both upstream and downstream. For Startle, examples of our Scope 3 emissions include; server hosting, software subscriptions, business travel, transportation and professional services. This Scope also includes emissions produced by home working.

Like most organisations, Scope 3 emissions make up the largest portion of our carbon footprint.

How we calculate Scope 3 emissions.

Home working

The two types of consumption taken into account for working from home emissions are electricity (this includes the use of lighting, computers, monitors and other electronic devices used for remote work), and heating (this includes the energy used to heat the employee’s homes).

Collecting meter readings from employees is impractical, so the total number of days worked remotely by employees for a given period is used to estimate the additional energy consumption of home working. A number of assumptions are made as to employee behaviour and household energy demand as per the EcoAct Whitepaper:

• Daily working hours = 8 hours.
• Annual leave allowance = 28 days (inc bank holidays).
• Renewable energy tariff = all employees are assumed to use standard grid-supplied energy and do not operate a renewable tariff or sources via direct onsite renewable generation (some of our employees do, so this is a worst case scenario calculation).
• The energy demand of lighting and workstation equipment = 150W. This assumes workstation (laptop/PC, monitor, phone and printer) energy usage = 140W + 10 W (lighting).
• Natural gas is the fuel source for all central heating systems.
• Average energy consumption of a UK household - the average UK household uses 12,000kWh of natural gas each year, 77% of which is used for central heating systems.
• The heating season lasts 182 days - from October until April.
• The average household has central heating running for 10 hours per day (this is the time temperature is being regulated and does not mean the boiler is actively heating for the entirety of this time).
• ⅔ homes would otherwise be unoccupied, resulting in a 66.7% incremental heating demand (⅓ homes would be occupied regardless of remote working, resulting in no additional heating usage).
• The central heating is operational for all hours worked remotely for the six months between October and April.

Supply chain

By integrating into our accountancy system, we use spend-based data matched to environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output models to provide industry average emissions per unit of currency spent. This provides a complete overview of our emissions across our entire value chain, not otherwise accounted for in Scope 1 and 2.

Spend-based data is mapped against an enhanced data set that represents the most robust and comprehensive carbon footprinting data available. Values are adjusted for currency conversion and inflationary changes as appropriate.

The above methodology gives us a good measure of our emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3. We use this data to reduce and offset our footprint on an annual basis.