G.Fauveau ADEME expert

What is a Bilan Carbone™?
      . What does it consist of?
      . What is ADEME’s role?


The Bilan Carbone™  (Carbon Assessment), created in 2003 by ADEME (The French Environment and Energy Management Agency), is a tool to evaluate direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases linked to the activities of a company, a government department or a local authority.


Taking into account the six gases or families of gases in the Kyoto Protocol (CO₂, N₂0, CH₄, HFC, PFC and SF6), the Bilan Carbone™ looks at the whole range of the company’s activities and identifies the most important points of emission from:

• direct use of energy,
• emissions arising from processes (leakage, etc.),
• transport (goods, supplies, employees, students, visitors, etc.),
• emissions related to incoming supplies,
• emissions related to the processing of waste products, end of life processing of packaging, processing of waste water, 
• emissions from the manufacture of fixed assets (furniture, vehicles, IT hardware) and tertiary services other than transport,
• emissions arising from the use of products or services sold or distributed by the audited body,
• emissions arising from the end of life of these same products or services.

As part of this evaluation process, ADEME has put into place a mechanism to help companies and local authorities to adhere to a predetermined specification while undertaking such a process.

To find out more: www.ademe.fr/bilan-carbone

What is the purpose of a Bilan Carbone™?

A Bilan Carbone™ allows companies to put into place an action plan tailored to the company and to the priorities identified during the evaluation. To be efficient, the company must concentrate its action on the highest emitting posts in order to take a stand in two areas:

• the fight against climate change whose environmental, economic and social consequences are likely to be significant
• evaluation of the company’s dependence on an increase in cost of hydrocarbons and thus anticipation of this impact in the light of increasing scarcity of resources.

What is the outcome of a Bilan Carbone™?

Following a Bilan Carbone™, the company implements its action plan through a pragmatic, effective, voluntary and cohesive programme often broken down into:

• immediate action (reduction in emissions without the need for investment),
• priority action (to be carried out in the short term with strong potential for reduction),
• strategic action (involving more in-depth consideration of the way the company operates and/or requiring larger investments).

In terms of action taken, operations are often linked to energy (energy diagnostics, insulation of buildings, change of heating materials or processes, etc.), transport (corporate travel plan, raising awareness of the use of public transport, consideration of the need to travel and means of transport with a switch from planes to trains, etc.), and materials and manufacturing processes (eco-design of products, changes in the type of materials used, etc.). Approaches are often linked to the relationship with suppliers in order to work on the customer-supplier chain in terms of overall reduction in emissions. In this latter case, the company launches straight into a real process of sustainable development.

What is the effect today of such a proposal among companies?
      . How many companies have undergone a Bilan Carbone™?
      . What is the typology of companies carrying out a Bilan Carbone™?
 

There are many requests for carrying out a Bilan Carbone™ and these increase year on year. In mid-2008, 1,200 Bilan Carbone™ were carried out, in the process of being carried out or being launched. For example, in Ile-de-France, the number of requests for subsidies in this area has doubled each year for three years.
As far as company typology is concerned, it is now clear that many sectors of activity are involved. Whether these involve services or supplies, industrial or other companies (for example, in the areas of banking, insurance, consultancy, cleaning, transport, communication, printing, manufacturing, textiles, food production, wholesale distribution), large companies or SMEs, carrying out a carbon footprint™has evidently become a significant challenge for them.
Many companies approach this carbon evaluation from a multi-site angle or from a national dimension, and in some cases from an international dimension. For GeoPost’s Bilan Carbone™, however, the international dimension has been little developed but I am certain that these achievements can be carried out in a very short space of time given the current environmental context.

 

 

 

 

tool developed by ADEME