Last update: October 22, 2024
At Upflow, we are committed to playing our part in addressing the climate crisis. Taking action now will help us become more resilient to the worsening living and working conditions on our planet. We also recognize our responsibility to reduce our contribution to global warming.
Measuring our carbon footprint is the first step in driving meaningful change. That’s why we calculated our corporate carbon footprint to better understand our reliance on fossil fuels and identify areas for improvement.
A company's carbon footprint tracks all the greenhouse gas emissions tied to its operations over the course of a year, organized by category. This tool helps measure a company's impact on the climate and identify the key drivers behind it. It’s a critical step toward effectively reducing emissions.
This year again, we worked with Sami’s team to analyze the carbon intensity of our activities.
In 2023, our carbon footprint amounted to 295 tonnes of CO2e.
To put this into perspective, that's equivalent to:
This footprint represents 3.3 tonnes of CO2e per team member. This is what we call the “team member carbon intensity”, which compares the carbon performance of employees with that of other companies.
For comparison, in the sector of computer software, out of 131 assessments conducted by our partner Sami, the average is 2.7 tonnes of CO2e.
Our main carbon emission categories, representing 70% of the total, are as follows:
Why should every company care about the climate?
Climate change is the biggest challenge of the century. By addressing it, we reduce the risks of food and healthcare system failures, lower hygiene standards, and the spread of viruses or bacteria. It also helps mitigate floods, wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves. Every company has a vital role to play in the ecological transition and can take meaningful steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Adopting a low-carbon strategy not only helps the climate but also brings other benefits—ensuring regulatory compliance, maintaining competitiveness, enhancing the employer brand, and meeting the environmental expectations of customers.
There are plenty of reasons to take action!
How do we calculate a carbon footprint?
Calculating a carbon footprint involves converting a company's activities over the year into a total amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
The entire operation is analyzed and divided into categories like office use, travel, digital activities, purchasing, production, etc. For each category, the company provides specific data, such as electricity consumption, reams of paper used, computers purchased, kilometers traveled by company vehicles, machine fleet details, and the amount of raw materials used. The exact list depends on the company's activities.
These data are then converted into CO2 emissions using emission factors. For example, if a company used 10 reams of paper in a year, and one ream represents 34 kg of CO2, the emissions from paper would be 10 x 34 = 340 kg CO2e for the year.
All these emissions are then summed up to calculate the company's total carbon footprint.
What’s a Bilan Carbone®?
The Bilan Carbone® methodology measures all the greenhouse gas emissions tied to a company’s operations—not just those it directly controls, like oil or gas use, but also emissions throughout its entire value chain, including customers, suppliers, and even the suppliers of its suppliers.
This methodology was developed by the French government through ADEME, the energy transition agency.
How do we use a carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint helps a company measure and understand its impact on the climate.
The results identify the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and guide efforts to reduce them. It also helps prioritize actions by focusing on the most significant emission sources.
By tracking the carbon footprint over time, companies can monitor progress, assess the impact of reduction efforts, and plan future improvements.
What’s a tonne of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e)?
A tonne of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) is a unit that accounts for the different greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and others.
Since these gases have different warming potentials—methane, for example, has 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide—the tCO2e allows us to express their impact in a single, comparable unit.
This gives us a clear and standardized way to measure the combined effects of all greenhouse gases.