What carbon accounting actually is.
Counting the greenhouse gases a business is responsible for, with the same discipline as money: source documents, consistent methods, and a number someone else can check. No jargon here, and a few things you can try.
How a number is produced
Every emissions figure comes from one simple sum. Try it.
This one counts as Scope 1
Activity data
What you did, in physical units: litres, kilowatt hours, kilograms, tonne-kilometres.
Emission factor
The gas produced per unit. It differs by country.
CO₂e
Every greenhouse gas, converted into one comparable number.
The three scopes
Sorted by how close they are to your control.
Scope 1 — what you burn
Fuel burned in equipment you own: generators, boilers, your own vehicles.
Scope 2 — the energy you buy
Electricity you buy. Someone else burned the fuel to make it.
Scope 3 — everything else you cause
Your suppliers, transport, travel, waste and the use of your products. Usually over 90% of the total, and the hardest part to measure.
Which scope is it?
Eight quick ones.
Question 1 of 8
0 out of 8
Why the grid matters so much
The same factory has a different number on a different grid. Drag to change how much power it uses.
Same output. Same machines. A difference of 460 tonnes of CO₂e a year, purely because of where the electricity came from.
Ember: Ghana 0.47 kg CO₂e per kWh (2024), South Africa 0.70 (2025), full lifecycle.
Your real number depends on your own meters, fuels and processes, and it only counts if you can document it.
Why this arrived in Ghana
None of it came from Ghanaian regulation.
Your buyers
Large European companies report their Scope 3, and that includes you. It arrives as a questionnaire from procurement.
Carbon at the border
Since 2026 the EU charges importers for the carbon in steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers and more. What CBAM means for you.
Money
Lenders increasingly price climate risk. Without your own numbers, you are judged on assumptions.
That is the whole idea.
Measure what you burn, what you buy, and what your supply chain does. The third is what we built Baseline for.