.eco Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report - 2023
2024 Fiscal Year
Updated:
About this document
This document describes the calculation boundaries, methodologies, assumptions and key references used in the preparation of the FY2023 inventory of Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Big Room’s operations. This document is written to meet the disclosure requirements under ISO 14064 (International Standard for GHG Emissions Inventories and Verification), as well as PAS 2060 (the BSI Standard for Carbon Neutrality).
The methodology, calculation and reporting statements have been validated by Inhabit. This report and statement of verification are publicly available on our website.
Reporting period
The GHG calculations are based on estimated emissions during Big Room’s 2023 fiscal year of October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023. This is the second year that Big Room is calculating our greenhouse gas emissions, with the 2022 fiscal year serving as the baseline year. Emissions targets and associated changes in emissions in 2023 will be calculated relative to this 2022 base year.
We chose 2022 as the baseline year as it was the first year that we calculated our business emissions and had reliable data. 2022 was also typical with respect to our operations, since we gave up our physical office and switched to working fully remotely in 2020. Our operations in 2023 are largely consistent with those of 2022.
In this and subsequent emissions reports, comparisons will be made to this base year. Our base year recalculation policy is to recalculate our base year and the prior year emissions for relevant significant changes which meet a significance threshold of 5% of base year emissions. In the event that base year emissions recalculation is required, we will clearly state and justify the rationale. However, no base year recalculation has been required for this year’s report.
Big Room’s carbon footprint will continue to be recalculated and reported annually at the end of our fiscal year end each September.
Organizational boundary
We follow an operational control approach when defining our organizational boundaries for emissions calculations. We consider direct and indirect emissions associated with Big Room’s core business, the operation of the .eco domain registry and Ecolabel Index.
Big Room does not have a physical office that we operate from. Our corporate address is a PO Box in an office building in Vancouver; there is no work performed at this location.
As all work is performed remotely from the homes of Big Room employees, we have decided to include 100% of the electricity and fossil gas use in our homes in our Scope 3 emissions under Category 7: Employee commuting. We exclude emissions from other activities occurring within the home, such as the purchase of food or goods for personal use, garbage or wastewater from our homes, home repairs or personal vehicle use as none of these pertain directly to Big Room’s business.
As Big Room provides digital services as our core business, we include any emissions associated with their operation within our Scope 3 emissions. These digital services operate from data centers run by our partners. We estimate our share of the energy use and associated emissions for our services running on the computer and network hardware in these data centers, along with the energy use of the Internet to transmit data to the end user and the associated estimated power draw of using our services on their digital devices. We follow the Sustainable Web Design methodology for our calculations. We include the emissions associated with digital services in Scope 3 - Category 11: Use of sold products.
As Google has started to provide estimated emissions data for the use of Google Workspace, we have included these emissions in our Category 11 emissions. At this point, we are not including any estimated emissions from other third party digital tools we use as part of our operations within our scope boundaries as insufficient data exists to estimate emissions accurately. We will continue to raise this with our service providers and keep this under consideration for future reporting periods.
Calculated emissions
The tables below summarize our annual emissions for the 2022-2023 fiscal year by scope and source.
Scope 1
| Source | 2023 emissions (t CO2e) |
Baseline emissions (t CO2e) |
% change vs baseline | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company facilities | 0 | 0 | 0% | Big Room has no leased or owned company facilities. |
| Company vehicles | 0 | 0 | 0% | Big Room has no leased or owned company vehicles. |
Scope 2
| Source | 2023 emissions (t CO2e) |
Baseline emissions (t CO2e) |
% change vs baseline | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 0 | 0 | 0% | Big Room has no leased or owned company facilities. |
Scope 3
| Source | 2023 emissions (t CO2e) |
Baseline emissions (t CO2e) |
% change vs baseline | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category 1: Purchased goods and services | Excluded from scope, not material | - | 0% | Most products and services Big Room purchases are digital. Emissions are not significant. Will be considered in future reporting year. |
| Category 2: Capital goods | 0 | 0 | 0% | No capital goods were purchased in FY2023 for business operations. |
| Category 3: Fuel and energy related activities | 0 | 0 | 0% | No extraction, production, and transportation of fuels and energy other than what is included in Scope 1 and 2. |
| Category 4: Upstream transportation and distribution | 0 | 0 | 0% | Our product (domain names) are virtual. No emissions associated with their transportation other than what is accounted for via our digital operations. |
| Category 5: Waste generated in operations | 0 | 0 | 0% | Emissions associated with waste or wastewater from our households are excluded. |
| Category 6: Business travel | 0 | 0 | 0% | No business travel occurred in FY2022 (COVID-19 pandemic). |
| Category 7: Employee commuting | 3.77 | 3.81 | -1.13% | As our work is performed remotely from our home offices, we are including 100% of our home electricity and gas emissions in this category. |
| Category 8: Upstream leased assets | 0 | 0 | 0% | Big Room has no upstream leased assets. |
| Category 9: Downstream transportation and distribution | 0 | 0 | 0% | As Big Room’s products are virtual they are not physically transported. The emissions associated with the transmission of our services are included in Category 11. |
| Category 10: Processing of sold products | 0 | 0 | 0% | Digital goods do not require intermediate processing. |
| Category 11: Use of sold products | 0.47 | 0.59 | -20.17% | Includes the operation and use of Big Room’s digital services. |
| Category 12: End-of-life treatment of sold products | 0 | 0 | 0% | Domain names are virtual and are deleted upon expiry. |
| Category 13: Downstream leased assets | 0 | 0 | 0% | We do not have assets we lease. |
| Category 14: Franchises | 0 | 0 | 0% | We have no franchisees. |
| Category 15: Investments | Excluded from scope, not material | - | 0% | Big Room does not hold any major investments |
| Total Scope 3 | 4.24 | 4.40 | -3.68% |
Calculation methodology
Category 7: Employee commuting
As we work exclusively remotely, we are accounting for 100% of the electricity and gas use in the homes of Big Room staff. Our homes are located in British Columbia, Canada and we are using emissions factors provided by the provincial government or local energy utilities. Emissions are based on the monthly billing data from our homes.
Electricity
Electricity emissions for the 2023 fiscal year are using the updated 2022 Integrated grid emissions factors supplied by the utility.
| Source | 2023 | Baseline | % change vs baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual electricity use (kWh) | 23291 | 20360 | +14% |
| Electricity emissions intensity (g CO2e / kWh) | 11.5 | 9.7 | +19% |
| Electricity emissions (t CO2e) | 0.27 | 0.20 | +36% |
Gas
The gas emissions intensity factor is unchanged from the baseline year.
| Source | 2023 | Baseline | % change vs baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual gas use (GJ) | 69.8 | 72.0 | -3% |
| Gas conversion factor (m3/GJ) | 25.5 | 25.5 | 0% |
| Gas emissions intensity (g CO2e / m3) | 1966 | 1966 | 0% |
| Gas emissions (t CO2e) | 3.50 | 3.61 | -3% |
Total Category 7 emissions: 3.77t CO2e
While electricity emissions increased by 36% in 2023 due to a combination of increased electricity use and an increase in the GHG emissions intensity of electricity in BC, this was offset by the 3% decrease gas use, leading to a net reduction in emissions of 1.13%. This reduction was not part of a targeted effort, and was likely due to a milder winter.
References:
- BC Natural gas emissions factor (g/m3)
- FortisBC natural gas GJ to m3 conversion
- BC Hydro emissions factor for integrated grid
Category 11: Use of sold products
We use this category to account for the estimated emissions associated with the digital services that run the .eco top-level domain and Big Room's business operations. These are internet services and applications that support .eco registrars, registrants and prospects to make use of the .eco domain extension.
Following the guidance of the Sustainable Web Design method, emissions are calculated based on the total amount of data transferred from each service across the Internet. When the data is served from or processed at a specific location (such as a data center), then emission factors for local electricity generation are used. When the location is unknown or broadly distributed, a default emissions factor of 442g CO2e/kWh is used (as per the recommendations from the model).
| Service | 2023 emissions (t CO2e) |
Baseline emissions (t CO2e) |
% change vs baseline | 2023 reduction target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .eco root zone DNS | 0.12 | 0.11 | +7.65% | 0% |
| .eco registry system | 0.08 | 0.08 | 0% | 0% |
| go.eco | 0.04 | 0.11 | -59.18% | -50% |
| profiles.eco | 0.07 | 0.12 | -42.72% | 20% |
| bigroom.eco | 0.01 | 0.02 | -61.65% | 40% |
| ecolabelindex.com | 0.14 | 0.16 | -12.23% | 40% |
| Google Workspace | 0.01 | - | - | - |
| Total | 0.47 | 0.59 | -20.7% |
Total Category 11 emissions: 0.47t CO2e
The 20% reduction in emissions from digital services was due to a concerted effort to optimize .eco web properties over the course of 2023. As indicated in the table above, we targeted a 20%-40% reduction for these web sites. For the most part we met or exceeded those targets. The exception is ecolabelindex.com, which we didn't get time to address. Optimizing this site is a candidate for this fiscal year.
References:
2024 emissions reduction target
For the 2023 fiscal year, we aimed for a 4% overall reduction in our emissions from our 2022 baseline. We fell slightly short of that target by achieving a 3.68% reduction. We feel pretty good about this achievement as this was our first attempt to set and meet a reduction target.
Based on this year's success, we're looking to reduce our overall emissions by 8% relative to the 2022 baseline for the upcoming 2024 fiscal year. This equates to an additional 4.32% reduction versus our emissions for the 2023 fiscal year. This reduction will come from a combination of additional website optimization and decreased domestic gas use.
Emissions management and monitoring
Emissions will be recalculated as part of an annual assessment in October 2024. Detailed emissions calculations are included in a supplemental workbook that will be updated at least annually as part of each assessment. Our auditing partners have reviewed the detailed calculations.
The following data sources are used as the inputs for emissions calculations:
- Energy utility bills for home offices
- Network traffic metrics for calculating data transmission associated with the use of digital services