What does the guide provide?

Businesses of all types are discovering that climate change poses both challenges and opportunities. To understand what these may be for your company, you must first measure your company’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by developing a GHG “inventory,” a list of the sources of your company’s emissions and their quantities. This information will enable you to identify opportunities to reduce emissions and draw up a long-term plan to manage your company’s impact on climate change. This guide is specifi cally for service-sector companies and provides:

• An introduction to climate change, its connection to service-sector companies, and the business case for taking action.

• Step-by-step guidance on assembling your company’s GHG inventory and managing your company’s emissions over time.

• Detailed information about GHG-accounting issues relevant to service-sector companies. Examples include accounting for the GHG emissions associated with leased assets such as buildings or vehicles, and guidance on deciding which emission-causing activities service-sector companies should measure.

• Case studies illustrating how service-sector companies are responding.

Note that technical terms and concepts that are part of the language of the GHG Protocol (see Box 1: The GHG Protocol) are explained and used in this guide. Uniform standards, including consistent methods and terminology, improve the usefulness and credibility of inventory information. Appendix 4 is a glossary of the terms used in this guide.