How We Help
If you’re to extract maximum value from your relationship with us, we really need to be talking at the pre-planning or planning stage of a new-build or refurbishment project, and certainly before you go to tender.
However, our work begins in earnest once you’ve done everything possible to avoid or reduce your building’s embodied carbon emissions and have calculated those which are inescapable.
If you need expert help with these two earlier stages, our sister organisation Yonder, one of the UK’s leading building physics engineering consultancies, offers it. They can also help you counter additional emissions produced during specific phases of a building’s lifecycle, including operational, disassembly and recycling. Between us, therefore, we cover the whole emission management process.
Assesing your needs
Assesing your needs
Green Box will start by providing any specialist assistance you require in developing a robust carbon offsetting policy, which every affected organisation should have, as you need to be clear about your goals before you start, if you’re to derive maximum benefit from the process.
Once that blueprint is in place, and we have a detailed idea of your circumstances and needs, we verify those embodied emission calculations and help you offset the amount they indicate, guiding you through the minefield which obtaining carbon credits can become.
Our net zero carbon capability assessments
Corporate Strategy
These are high-level assessments, potentially global in scope, incorporating all the operations and developments of companies that want to implement or set targets for enterprise-wide zero-carbon strategies. These analyses therefore examine aspects such as their buildings and means of staff travel, plus their purchasing and procurement policies.
Company Footprinting
Our company carbon footprinting assessments focus on clients’ supply chains. They’re conducted at a similarly high level to the corporate strategy analyses but are necessarily more detailed, as they cover a myriad of aspects and points of detail that need to be mapped. Foot-printing studies: embrace features of the building process such as materials manufacture, construction, and waste; extend to third-party groups, like contractors and installers; and often cover multiple projects, for example.
Project impacts
These assessments are partly about what happens on-site, as projects are built. They therefore examine features such as use of diesel and electricity during the construction process. However, project-related carbon emissions don’t just originate on-site, so we also look at features such as workforce travel to and from developments, operational ordering procedures, back-office design, and materials manufacture.
We recommend and supply the right credits for you, taking into account a range of important factors.
We recommend and supply the right credits for you, taking into account a range of important factors.
Key aspects of our service include:
Strategy
We ensure that your credits match criteria such as your business approach, model, any previous corporate social responsibility activity or established policy you observe relating to environmental causes.
Available credits can cover any number of activities and those you buy are fully visible to the public and other businesses, so consistency matters if your organisation is to gain from them to the maximum extent possible.
If you already have a history of supporting projects that involve carbon capture and storage, for example, we can ensure you obtain cost-effective credits relating to that kind of initiative.
Cost
Not all carbon credits offer value for money, so we work within clients’ finite budgets and always recommend credits which, as well as ticking all other key boxes, provide an appropriate trade-off between price and standard.
Age
The credits you buy don’t have to be obtained on the day you complete your building, nor do they have to be brand new. So even credits which have remained unsold for, say, two to three years – contrary to some opinions – may well still offer decent quality and even bargains.
We can help you distinguish between credits in this category and those where lengthy periods on the market may indicate poor value.
Timing
Buying at the wrong time is a common, costly mistake, and we help clients avoid this error. We can examine their development pipelines, using our experience of similar situations, identify future junctures when their demand is likely to spike, and arrange purchases accordingly – generally, it’s best to buy early, to protect yourself against future price rises.
Then, at appropriate times, we can validate emission calculations, retire credits, issue certificates, and either hold any unused credits on account for the client’s next project or sell them to another organisation.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The credits we supply always concern projects reflecting one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These were agreed in 2015 and are targeted for achievement by 2030 at the latest. This list of UN objectives includes:
- Affordable and clean energy
- Sustainable cities and communities
- Climate action
Verra and Gold Standard
All our credits concern projects approved by world-leading accreditation bodies. They develop and apply rigorous sets of rules and requirements against which environmental projects are judged and certified, before they become the subjects of credits to be bought by carbon emitting organisations.
Verra, for example, runs the Verified Carbon Standard scheme, which is the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas programme of this kind. Verra and Gold Standard are recognised by the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance, whose Code of Best Practice says projects must be:
- Real
- Permanent
- Independently verified
- Unique
- Additional
UK Green Building Council
We have aligned our approach to accord with guidance provided by the UKGBC. The organisation’s key output includes its Renewable Energy Procurement and Carbon Offsetting Guidance for Net Zero Carbon Buildings, published in March 2021. Designed to support the UKGBC’s landmark report Net Zero Carbon Buildings: A Framework Definition, this guidance assists building developers, designers, owners, occupants, and policy makers – especially their energy procurement, facility management and sustainability professionals. All the verification of carbon emission calculations we undertake for clients, for example, complies with UKGBC standards.
As the market matures, it’s almost certain additional reputable certification schemes will be launched and, where appropriate, we’ll ensure the developments on which we work achieve compliance with these too.