Living Our Values

A closer look at EDF’s own sustainability efforts

Scroll down to see how we’re doing

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Our Commitment

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EDF is committed to building a vital Earth, for everyone. Some of our accomplishments in 2021 included helping to achieve climate action at the local, state, corporate, and international levels. EDF identified the “methane moment,” catalyzed by EDF scientist findings that it is possible to cut global methane pollution in half and slow the rate of global warming by 30%, using existing technologies. We continued partnerships to change the way natural resources are managed, strengthening the ability of forests, coastal wetlands and other ecosystems to reduce climate impacts. EDF helped farmers and fishing communities thrive even in the face of climate change, supported clean air efforts led by frontline communities facing effects of pollution from industry, and is speeding the transition to electric cars and trucks and toward a global clean energy economy with no net climate pollution.

Since 2007, we have reported on our own efforts to improve organizational sustainability and continually refine those evaluation methods. This report uses emissions factors and methodologies that are most appropriate for EDF’s organizational context, and therefore, it should not be viewed as a recommendation of best or only practice.

Our data-driven approach utilizes the GHG Protocol:

You can learn more about the GHG protocol in the Methods & Appendix section.

  • Scope 1 emissions

    • Natural gas

  • Scope 2 emissions

    • Electricity
    • Steam

  • Scope 3 emissions

    • Copy paper
    • Membership mailings
    • Business travel
    • Staff commutes

Throughout this report, we use two significant figures for all calculated values. Reported totals may differ from the sum of their terms due to rounding. For questions, comments, and feedback on this dashboard, please contact sustainability@edf.org.

Summary

GWP-100 GWP-20

FY2021

By scope

FY2021 GWP-100

Total - tCO2e

    • EMISSION SCOPE
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • SCOPE 1Natural gas
    • -
    • -
    • SCOPE 2Electricity & Steam
    • -
    • -
    • SCOPE 3Travel & Paper
    • -
    • -
GWP-100 GWP-20

FY2021

By type

FY2021 GWP-100

Total - tCO2e

INTENSITY PER FTE -

    • EMISSION Type
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • Travel
    • -
    • -
    • Office Energy
    • -
    • -
    • Paper
    • -
    • -

All emissions factors included carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and most included methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which are powerful GHGs.
We calculated emissions using a Global Warming Potential (GWP) with a 20-year time horizon (GWP-20) and a GWP with a 100-year time horizon (GWP-100).
Read more about GWP below.

Past emissions

In 2020, we began reporting fiscal year (FY) emissions rather than calendar year (CY) emissions to align sustainability planning and reporting with other internal cycles. Paper calculations have been updated using the most up-to-date emissions factors. Emissions for Travel and Office Energy represent methodologies used for each respective year.

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

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tCO2e Total

    • Source
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • Paper
    • -
    • -
    • Travel
    • -
    • -
    • Office Energy
    • -
    • -
Scroll down for a detailed break down of office energy, travel, and paper emissions.

Details

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to affect EDF’s operations in fiscal year (FY) 2021. Most of our offices remained partially closed and sparsely staffed, and staff travel continued to decrease to comprise only 13.5 % of pre-pandemic levels. Our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reflected these changes: compared to FY 2020, office energy emissions fell by about 4% and travel emissions decreased by 73% in FY 2021. While office energy and travel-related emissions decreased, emissions related to mailings to current and prospective members increased significantly by about 38%. In FY 2021, EDF’s total GHG emissions were 7% higher than FY 2020 on a 100-year time horizon, and 12% higher on a 20-year time horizon.

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Office Energy

EDF operated 11 offices in five countries in FY 2021. In that timeframe, energy use in our leased office spaces generated 540 (GWP-20) / 440 (GWP-100) tCO2e. Scope 1 (natural gas), Scope 2 (electricity) and Scope 3 (steam) emissions were responsible for 48%, 48% and 3% (GWP-20) / 43%, 52%, 4% (GWP-100) of total office energy emissions, respectively.

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PAST OFFICE ENERGY EMISSIONS

BY ENERGY SOURCE

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

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tCO2e Total

    • Source
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • Electricity
    • -
    • -
    • Natural Gas
    • -
    • -
    • District Steam
    • -
    • -

FY2021 OFFICE ENERGY EMISSIONS

BY LOCATION (tCO2e, GWP-100)

Hover over the circles to see more detailed information.

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Total Emissions tCO2e

Emissions by Employee tCO2e/FTE

Emissions by Office Space tCO2e/Sq Ft

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Travel

According to the emissions factors used in this report, air and ground travel produced minimal emissions of non-CO2 pollutants. As a result, GWP-20 emissions were nearly identical to GWP-100 emissions for these sources. For ease of reading, we report these emissions as tCO2e. EDF staff and trustees flew nearly 450 thousand miles in FY 2021, generating 310 tCO2e.

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PAST TRAVEL EMISSIONS

BY TRAVEL TYPE

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

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tCO2e Total

    • Source
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • Employee Commutes
    • -
    • -
    • Hotel stays
    • -
    • -
    • Vehicles
    • -
    • -
    • Rail
    • -
    • -
    • Air
    • -
    • -

FY2021 EMPLOYEE TRAVEL EMISSIONS

100 HIGHEST EMITTING EMPLOYEES (tCO2e, GWP-100)

Highest Emitting
10 Employees

Lowest Emitting
10 Employees

FY2021 AIR TRAVEL EMISSIONS

BY SEGMENT & CLASS (tCO2e, GWP-100)

EMISSIONS TICKETS

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Paper

EDF mailed 1,100 metric tons of paper (36% more than in FY 2020) to existing, former, and prospective members, generating nearly all paper-related emissions. The remaining emissions came from office paper use. Nearly half of the paper used by Membership, and therefore almost half of the department’s paper-related emissions, was for acquisitions. The remaining emissions came from paper used for EDF’s Solutions newsletter and mailings for reinstatements, appeals, conversions, renewals and cultivation.

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PAST PAPER EMISSIONS

BY TYPE (tCO2e, GWP-100)

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

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tCO2e Total

    • Source
    • tCO2e
    • %
    • Membership Mailings
    • -
    • -
    • Office Copy Paper
    • -
    • -
    • Contracted Projects
    • -
    • -

FY2021 MEMBERSHIP MAILING EMISSIONS PER HOUSEHOLD

Number of Households Mailed

Emissions per Household (lb CO2e)

Number of households only available from FY 2017.

Walking the Talk

We strive for our sustainability efforts to reflect our goals and values of Results, Respect, Innovation, Optimism and Integrity. EDF will continue to produce annual, publicly available sustainability reports and GHG emissions inventories. Each year we will strive to improve the quality of our data, identify and adopt the best available methodologies and work with other organizations to share best practices in calculating environmental impacts.

In an effort to mitigate our environmental impact, EDF supports greenhouse gas reduction projects around the world. To offset our 2021 footprint, we supported the Capricorn Ridge Wind project in Texas and the Bondhu Chula Cook Stove Project in Bangladesh. Soon, we will announce the projects we will support to offset our 2022 footprint.

Methods & Appendix

We collected activity data for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions from property managers and energy providers. For Scope 3 emissions, we gathered activity data from EDF’s corporate travel provider, surveys of staff and trustees, mileage reimbursement records, print management software and internal purchase records. We used methodologies and emissions factors (i.e., the coefficients that convert activity data into GHG emissions) from the GHG Protocol, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Environmental Paper Network, Enerdata,Mexico’s Registro Nacional de Emisiones and the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index.

“Throughout this report, we use two significant figures for all calculated values. Reported totals may differ from the sum of their terms due to rounding.”

GWP

We calculate emissions using the standard metric in climate research and policy — global warming potential, or GWP, which measures climate impacts in both the near and long term. We use GWP with two time scales as opposed to the common approach of using just one.

Using two allows us to understand the effects of our emissions both in the near term (more than 20 years) and the long term (more than 100 years).

For more information on this, check out the study, Unmask temporal trade-offs in climate policy debates.{.link-image target=“_blank”}

By calculating the carbon dioxide equivalence, or CO2e, of EDF’s greenhouse gas emissions using two different GWP values — GWP 20 and GWP 100 — we have estimated the climate impact that EDF’s emissions will have during our lifetime and during the lifetimes of future generations.

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GHG Emissions from Previous Years

We have not adjusted EDF’s Past Travel or Office Energy Emissions using the emissions factors for FY 2021.

Defining Full-Time Employees

We calculated FTEs as an employee’s scheduled hours divided by the number of hours for a full-time workweek. To account for new hires and departures in FY 2021, we calculated FTEs on a monthly basis and used the annual average. Reports from prior years included regular and temporary contingent staff members, so FTE numbers (and therefore emissions intensity per FTE) are not fully comparable across years.

Calculating Emissions from Travel

EDF’s Travel Policy requires employees to book travel through a corporate travel provider, which is the source of much of our travel activity data. This report does not include any business-related travel that EDF staff may have arranged outside a preferred travel provider.

We also surveyed EDF trustees about their travel arrangements to attend EDF board meetings. Commuting emissions were calculated using data from a survey of EDF employees about their pre-pandemic commuting habits.

Calculating Emissions from Air Travel

For trustees who did not respond to the travel survey, we estimated air travel using their city or state of residence as the point of origin. We used emissions factors from the U.S. EPA for short-, medium- and long-haul flights.

First and business class seats take up considerably more room in an aircraft than economy seating and therefore reduce the total number of passengers that can be carried. This in turn raises the average GHG emissions per passenger mile. Seat numbers were based on the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) 2021 methodology paper for emissions factors.

Aviation has additional climate impacts from the radiative forcing of contrails. We purchase additional carbon credits to account for this effect. We will continue to monitor this area of research.

Calculating Emissions from Rail Travel

We collected rail travel data from EDF’s corporate travel provider, and we used an emissions factor of 0.058 kgCO2/mile for the U.S. Northeast Corridor and 0.150 kgCO2/mile for all other rail routes, as defined by the U.S. EPA.

Calculating Emissions from Vehicle Travel

For miles driven in personal vehicles for business purposes, we used data from EDF’s expense reimbursement records. In the absence of actual data on miles driven in rental vehicles, we assumed that rental cars were driven an average of 36.92 miles per day, based on the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration estimate that the average American’s annual mileage is 13,476 per year. We used emissions factors from the U.S. EPA.

Calculating Emissions from Hotel Stays

We collected data from EDF’s corporate travel provider as well as a survey of EDF trustees regarding their travel arrangements for attending EDF board meetings. For trustees who did not respond to the survey, we assumed that they stayed two nights in a hotel at the board meeting location. We used country- and (where available) city-specific emissions factors from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index.

The global food system produces significant GHG emissions, but we have not included such emissions in our inventories thus far. We are investigating the best way to account for food-related emissions from hotel stays, conferences and events.

Calculating Emissions from Employee Commutes

We conducted an anonymous staff survey in April 2020 to gather data about pre-pandemic commuting, including but not limited to modes of transportation, distance traveled and commuting frequency. The survey received a 62% response rate, with proportional representation of offices and programs. We assumed the survey responses were representative of all staff, and that employees commuted more in FY 2021 than in FY 2020. We used emissions factors defined by the U.S. EPA.

Calculating Emissions from Office Energy Use

We collected data from property managers and energy providers, and we used emissions factors from the following sources:

  • For Austin, Bentonville (electricity), Boston (electricity), Boulder, New York, Raleigh, Sacramento, San Francisco (electricity) and Washington, DC we used conversion factors from the U.S. EPA’s eGRID output rates.
  • For Beijing and natural gas for Bentonville, New York and San Francisco, we used emissions factors from WRI’s GHG protocol and the IPCC.
  • For Boston (district steam), we used emissions factors from the U.S. EPA.
  • For Jakarta, we used conversion factors from Enerdata.
  • For La Paz, we used emissions factors from Registro Nacional de Emisiones.
  • For London, we used emissions factors from DEFRA.

Office energy emissions include CO2, CH4 and N2O. The emissions of non-CO2 gases from direct electricity generation are minimal. However, CH4 leaks in the natural gas supply chain have additional climate impacts. To calculate fugitive CH4 emissions from the electricity supply chain, we used state-specific upstream leak rates of delivered gas. For international offices, we assumed a leak rate of 2.9% We also included state-specific heat content of consumed natural gas (U.S. Energy Information Administration) and the fraction of electricity generation by fuel (U.S. EPA eGRID). We assumed a power plant efficiency of 7,732 BTU/kwh (U.S. Energy Information Administration). To calculate fugitive CH4 emissions from the natural gas supply chain, we assumed a leak rate of 2.9% and used state-specific heat content of consumed natural gas (U.S. Energy Information Administration).

Three offices had missing or anomalous energy data.

  • New York City: Building management in the NY office does not provide natural gas usage data per tenant or floor. We assumed our use was a percentage of the building’s total use, based on square footage.
  • Raleigh: This office is not sub-metered. We estimated our energy use as a percentage of the building’s total use, based on square footage.
  • Washington, DC: This office’s reported energy usage was abnormally low. It is now sub-metered and we will have monthly readings for much of FY 2021.

Calculating Emissions from Paper Use

EDF’s Development Department tracks the weight of membership mailings and contracted projects. EDF offices in the U.S. track paper use with PaperCut print management software. We used purchase records to estimate paper usage in the London office. Due to a lack of data on paper use, this report does not include emissions from office paper used in Beijing, Jakarta or La Paz. This is a data gap we will work to fill in future reports. U.S. offices use TreeZero paper. According to TreeZero, the production and distribution of their sugarcane waste-based paper generates 1 tCO2 per ton of paper. The price of TreeZero paper includes the cost of carbon credit purchases, but we included the emissions in this inventory and purchased carbon credits for those emissions.

For external printing and membership mailings, we used emissions factors from the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 4.0, except for CH4, where we used a GWP-20 of 84, not the Paper Calculator’s default of 102.9 For more information visit www.papercalculator.org. The conversions were 4.04 tCO2e (GWP-20) / 2.62 tCO2e (GWP-100) per ton of paper with 100% recycled content and 6.18 tCO2e (GWP-20) / 4.79 tCO2e (GWP-100) per ton of paper with 30% recycled content. This calculation does not include emissions from shipping the materials from printers to recipients. We hope to calculate these emissions in future inventories.

Emissions of Other Pollutants

GHG emissions from travel, office energy, and paper included CO2, CH4, and N2O. The emissions factors for paper and office energy also included other pollutants that have a range of deleterious effects on human health and the environment. Most of these pollutants have atmospheric lifetimes on the order of hours to weeks, so including them in calculations of our overall climate impacts over decades-long time horizons is inappropriate. We report them separately here. We are considering how to mitigate the impact of such emissions in the future.

Other Pollutant Emissions from Office Energy Use

    • Other Pollutant Emissions from Office Energy Use
    • Mg (t)
    • tCO2e (GWP-20)
    • tCO2e (GWP-100)
    • Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
    • 0.10
    • 12
    • -1.1
    • Sulfur dioxide (SO2)
    • 0.04
    • -10
    • -1.4