Annex 4 - Help with determining the boundary

What practical advice to delimit the study boundary?

Assistance for boundary determination

⏳[WIP] A framing annex and aid for boundary delineation is being drafted. It will be made available in 2024.

The organisation may refer to sectoral work, such as those carried out by ADEME, French professional federations, which provide guidance on boundary determination.

The General Carbon Plan is also a usable resource, which aims to answer these practical questions by sharing best practices from the carbon accounting community.

⏳[WIP] A forthcoming resource will be produced and made available in early 2025 to provide a reusable flow mapping template. Variants of this template for certain major sectors will be proposed as sources of inspiration. These variants present sectoral trends and do not guarantee the exhaustiveness of identified flows, which will need to be analysed on a case-by-case basis.

Assistance for materiality determination

It is accepted that some sources of indirect GHG emissions, within the operational boundary of an organisation, do not contribute significantly to the total of indirect emissions. The notion of materiality can be useful to set priorities during accounting, when choosing actions or when monitoring results.

⏳[WIP] A framing annex and aid for determining materiality thresholds is being drafted. It will be made available in 2024.

🔎 The notion of significance comes from theISO 14064-1 and is included within the BEGES-R. It proposes a step-by-step procedure for identifying significant indirect emissions.

For an emission to be considered significant emission, it must meet at least one of the significance criteria :

• Magnitude criterion : Indirect emission categories estimated as substantial from a quantitative point of view should be retained. A minimum magnitude threshold to consider is expressed as a percentage. It establishes the minimum proportion of the operational boundary's indirect emissions to include in the reporting boundary. The magnitude threshold must not be lower than 80%. Note that the ISO 14064-1 standard refers to the same notion by importance criterion the same notion.

• Level of influence and levers for action : the extent to which the organisation can monitor and reduce emissions and removals (for example, energy efficiency, eco-design, customer engagement, terms of reference).

• Strategic importance and vulnerability according to a risk or opportunity approach: concerns indirect emissions or removals that contribute to the organisation's exposure to risks (for example, risks associated with climate change such as financial risks, regulatory risks, supply chain risks, product and customer risks, litigation risks, reputational damage risks) or to its business opportunities (new market or new business model, for example).

• Sector-specific guidance : GHG emissions considered significant for the sector concerned, according to sector-specific guidance.

• Outsourcing : indirect emissions and removals resulting from outsourced activities that are generally core activities.

• Employee engagement : indirect emissions likely to motivate employees to reduce their emissions or that build team spirit around climate change.

In summary, emissions are considered material if they represent more than 80% of the assessment's emissions (magnitude or importance criterion), if they are directly influenced by the organisation (influence and leverage criterion), if they contribute to exposure to risks and opportunities (strategic importance and vulnerability criterion), if they are deemed material for the organisation's sector of activity (sector guidance criterion), if they result from core activities outsourced by the organisation (outsourcing criterion), and if they are likely to mobilise employees (staff engagement criterion).

The organisation can rely on several resources to identify its significant indirect emissions:

• Having completed an initial Bilan Carbone®, or relying on the Bilan Carbone® of a similar organisation (OCCF)

• Refer to sectoral work, such as those carried out by ADEME, French professional federations, or by think tanks like the Shift Project, which provide guidance on boundary determination. Video example.

• The General Carbon Plan is also a usable resource, which aims to answer these practical questions in a consensual manner. Sectoral approaches are useful to know common emission sources for a given sector.

• The step-by-step procedure for identifying significant indirect emissions of the Regulatory GHG Assessment.