Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosure
About Buchanan & Edwards, Inc.
Buchanan & Edwards (BE) is a national security-focused, mid-sized, IT professional services firm with extensive Federal Government experience. BE is large enough to serve the Government’s largest customers through our world class capabilities and certified quality processes, yet nimble enough to ensure the pinpoint focus, executive accessibility, and rapid decision-making agility of a smaller firm. BE delivers forward-focused operations and technology solutions that help our clients transform the way they perform their missions. Global security, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, and international development are some of the vital areas in which our organization is helping to make a difference. BE’s commitment is driven by our values-based culture that stresses collaboration, curiosity, corporate citizenship, and responsibility. Our culture drives us to continuously pursue the highest quality of consulting services by empowering clients to become faster, smarter, and more operationally efficient, while offering the best possible value for their investments. We strive to gain a detailed understanding of each client's mission, expertise in leading-edge technologies, and an innovative approach to problem-solving.
In addition to our internal and client facing values, we strive as a company to be a good corporate citizen and have a positive and meaningful impact on the communities where we are based, the country where we serve, and the global community in which we live. This includes understanding how Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) contribute to climate change and understanding our company’s role – positive or negative – in this change.
Business Case and GHG Focus Areas
Climate change is a global challenge that brings serious consequences for our society, our economy, our infrastructure, and our natural environment. The current concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere are at levels unprecedented in at least the last 650,000 years, and as a result, the earth’s climate is warming.1 Climate change has clearly become a global challenge that implies consequences in the social and economic infrastructure and the natural environment. While much of the focus has been on companies and industries that are direct “emitters” of GHGs, service companies like BE also play an important role. BE recognizes the need for service-sector companies to reduce global GHG emissions to minimize the economic dangers of climate change over time. Service-sector companies have an opportunity to influence their operations, supply chains, customers, employees, and other stakeholders to help change those behaviors necessary to curb the most dangerous effects of climate change.2 This is why BE is committed to inventorying, reporting, and reducing GHG emissions over time. It is our goal to leverage appropriate opportunities for energy savings throughout the business and to position ourselves as an environmentally responsible organization and a contributor to general carbon reduction targets.
Inventory GHG Emissions
BE conducted a GHG inventory to enable our company to identify emission reduction opportunities, set reduction targets, and track our progress over time based on the World Resource Institute’s publication – A Service Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management. The inventory quantifies the amount of GHG emissions that can be attributed to our operations inside a defined boundary and scope for a specified reporting period. The inventory was prepared in accordance with the guiding principles established by the GHG protocol which includes relevance by defining boundaries that reflect the GHG emissions of the business and the decision-making needs of the inventory users, completeness by accounting for all emissions sources and activities within organizational and operational boundaries, consistency by allowing a comparison of emissions performance over time and stating any changes in the basis of reporting to make sure the comparison remains valid, transparency by addressing all relevant issues and citing the calculation methodologies used, and finally, accuracy by ensuring that the GHG calculations are accurate, and provide reasonable assurance of the GHG information’s integrity.3 BE’s inventory focuses on our emission-generating activities such as electricity use, business travel, and product and material distribution. We conducted this inventory in two phases: Determining our Organizational Boundary and setting our Operational Boundary.
Determining our Organizational Boundary
To determine our Operational Boundary, we followed the GHG Protocol recommendation to evaluate utilize one of three approaches to determine our direct carbon footprint. The three Organizational Boundary approaches are:
- Equity Share
- Financial Control
- Operational Control
As a corporate entity, BE consists of the parent company and its two subsidiaries, RenXTech and R2C. Since BE maintains full ownership and full operational control of the corporate parent and subsidiaries, including complete authority to create and apply operating policies maintaining operational control, BE implemented the Operational Control method.
Setting Operational Boundary
Creating an Operational Boundary enables BE to categorize our emissions causing activities. To aide in both identification and reporting, the GHG Protocol defines two standard categories:
- Direct Emissions (Scope 1): Emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company. BE does not have any direct control over electricity generation or own transportation used by the organization.
- Not Applicable: After a thorough analysis, we have determined that BE has no Scope 1 emissions.
- Indirect Emissions: Refers to the any emissions from any source that are not owned or controlled by the company. Indirect emissions can be further broken down into two scopes:
- (Scope 2): Refers to emissions from energy consumption used and generated by another company. In GHG accounting terminology, this refers to “purchased electricity.” BE’s office location is in a leased space and does not pay for metered electricity use.
- Not Applicable: After a thorough analysis, we have determined that BE has no Scope 2 emissions.
- (Scope 3): Refers to upstream emissions related to purchased or acquired goods and/or services and downstream emissions relating to sold product use.
- Applicable: After a thorough analysis, we have determined that BE has Scope 3 emissions that we will inventory, set reduction targets for, and report performance against these targets.
- (Scope 2): Refers to emissions from energy consumption used and generated by another company. In GHG accounting terminology, this refers to “purchased electricity.” BE’s office location is in a leased space and does not pay for metered electricity use.
Scope 3 Inventory and Commitment
BE has determined that we produce Scope 3 indirect GHG emissions. Based on our organizational and operational boundary, and further based on the principles of relevance, completeness, consistency, and accuracy, BE’s Scope 3 inventory will include the following:
- Business Travel (In non-company-owned or controlled vehicles such as rental cars, employee cars, trains, and commercial planes)
- Shipping
- Shared Electricity Consumption (Not owned or controlled by BE but included in lease expense)
BE will abide by the GHG Protocol’s objective to present annual performance reporting on emitted GHGs for both internal management methods and external reporting purposes. BE will report its GHG emissions by the two measurement and reporting decisions, namely the scope of emissions and its organizational boundary.
References
Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Determine Organizational Boundaries. EPA. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/determine-organizational-boundaries
European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), “Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship during the Late Pleistocene” and “Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores,” Science, November 25, 2005.
Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management. (n.d.). Retrieved March 29, 2023, from http://pdf.wri.org/hotclimatecoolcommerce.pdf
1 European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), “Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship during the Late Pleistocene” and “Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores,” Science, November 25, 2005.
2 Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management. Retrieved from http://pdf.wri.org/hotclimatecoolcommerce.pdf
3 Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management. Retrieved from http://pdf.wri.org/hotclimatecoolcommerce.pdf
4 Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management. Retrieved from http://pdf.wri.org/hotclimatecoolcommerce.pdf