Our impact
For more than 50 years, we have been building innovative solutions to the biggest environmental challenges — from soil to space.
About us
Guided by science and economics, and committed to climate justice, we work in the places, on the projects and with the people that can make the biggest difference.
Get involved
If we act now — together — there’s still time to build a future where people, the economy and the Earth can all thrive. Every one of us has a role to play. Choose yours.
News and stories
Stay informed and get inspired with our in-depth reporting about the people and ideas making a difference, insight from our experts and the latest progress in the climate flight.

Living Our Values

A closer look at EDF’s own sustainability efforts

Scroll down to see how we’re doing

hero-image

Our Commitment

person-writing

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:

The GHG Protocol helps measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions to track environmental impact and promote sustainability. The emissions are categorized into three scopes as seen below. 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, or Global Warming Potential, refers to the ability of a greenhouse gas to trap extra heat into the atmosphere relative to CO 2 , over a 100 or 20-year time period.

GWP-100 GWP-20

FY2023

By scope

FY2023 GWP-100

Total - tCO2e

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

FY2023

By type

FY2023 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 were updated in 2019. Emissions for Travel and Office Energy represent methodologies used for each respective year.

tCO2 e (GWP-100) tCH4

tCO2e

FTE

icon-line

tCO2e tCH4 Total

    • Source
    • tCO2e tCH4
    • %
    • Paper
    • -
    • -
    • Travel
    • -
    • -
    • Office Energy
    • -
    • -
Scroll down for a detailed break down of office energy, travel, and paper emissions.

Details

EDF’s operations in fiscal year FY 2023 most closely resemble pre-pandemic levels. All our offices fully reopened and staff travel increased sharply to more closely resemble pre-pandemic levels. Our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reflected these changes: compared to FY 2022, office energy emissions decreased by about 16%, travel emissions increased by about 83%, and paper emissions decreased by about 5% in FY 2023. In FY 2023, EDF’s total GHG emissions were 15% higher than FY 2022 on a 100-year time horizon, and 11% higher on a 20-year time horizon.

For the first time in 2022, EDF began reporting methane emissions individually, in addition to total GHG emissions in both time horizons. This reporting structure better aligns with EDF’s global methane reduction strategies and the urgency of the “methane moment.”

Methane emissions are calculated for all scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from 2020 until now, from 2014-2019 we only calculated methane alone for membership mailings, which make up a majority of methane emissions.

details

Office Energy

EDF operated 11 offices in five countries in FY 2023. In that timeframe, energy use in our leased office spaces generated 570(GWP-20) / 480(GWP-100) tCO2e. Natural gas, electricity, and steam emissions were responsible for 30%, 67% and 3% (GWP-20) / 25%, 71%, 4% (GWP-100) of total office energy emissions, respectively.

lightbulb lightbulb

PAST OFFICE ENERGY EMISSIONS

BY ENERGY SOURCE

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

icon-line

tCO2e Total

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

FY2023 OFFICE ENERGY EMISSIONS

BY LOCATION (tCO2e, GWP-100)

Hover over the circles to see more detailed information.

office-energy-label

Total Emissions tCO2e

Emissions by Employee tCO2e/FTE

Emissions by Office Space tCO2e/Sq Ft

details

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 13 million miles in FY 2023, generating 3,000 tCO2e.

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. Flying first or business class accounted for 40% of EDF’s total air travel emissions. If every passenger who flew first or business class in FY 2023 had flown economy instead, total air travel emissions would have been 26% lower.

For the second time in our annual report, we have included emissions from EDF’s annual retreat, which made up 3% of air travel emissions and 26% of hotel stay emissions this year.

airplane airplane

PAST TRAVEL EMISSIONS

BY TRAVEL TYPE

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

icon-line

tCO2e Total

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

FY2023 EMPLOYEE TRAVEL EMISSIONS

100 HIGHEST EMITTING EMPLOYEES (tCO2e, GWP-100)

Tons of emissions

Highest Emitting
10 Employees

Employees
91-100

Of 1,183 unique air travelers in FY 2023, the top 10 travelers accounted for nearly 14% of EDF’s overall travel emissions.

FY2023 AIR TRAVEL EMISSIONS

BY SEGMENT & CLASS (tCO2e, GWP-100)

EMISSIONS TICKETS

details

Paper

EDF mailed 1,100 metric tons of paper (8% less than in FY 2022) 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.

papers papers

PAST PAPER EMISSIONS

BY TYPE (tCO2e, GWP-100)

tCO2e (GWP-100)

Full-Time Employees

icon-line

tCO2e Total

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

FY2023 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.

Methods & Appendix

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.

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.

planet

GHG Emissions from Previous Years

We have not adjusted EDF’s Past Travel or Office Energy Emissions using the emissions factors for FY 2023.

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 2023, 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.

Commuting emissions were calculated using data from a survey of EDF employees about their pre-pandemic commuting habits.

Calculating Emissions from Air Travel

Seat numbers were based on the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) 2023 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 and from EDF trustee hotel stays related to attending board meetings and events. 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 2022 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, Boston (electricity), Boulder, New York, Raleigh, San Francisco (electricity) and Washington, DC we used conversion factors from the U.S. EPA’s eGRID output rates.
  • For Beijing we used emissions factors from the GHG protocol.
  • For natural gas usage in New York and San Francisco, we used emissions factors from 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).

One office had missing 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.

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)
    • 0.02
    • -7
    • -1.0