Carbon Footprint
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. To help meet that challenge, global enterprises like Omnicom must do our part to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lessen our environmental impact.
Measuring Our Footprint
In 2008, we performed our first large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions assessment. We engaged all of our 1,500 agencies to get a unified picture of electric, fuel, oil and natural gas consumption, as well as employee business-related automobile and air travel. This process brought us to what we're confident is an accurate CO2 emissions baseline.
Methodology
Omnicom uses the guidelines established by The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative (a partnership between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) to calculate our carbon footprint.
We gather data from around 1,000 separate locations to calculate our Scope 1, 2 and 3 level emissions. We then convert the gathered information into our carbon emissions total (measured in metric tons) using formulas provided by GHG Protocols. We recognize the potential for human error with such a large number of individuals gathering and inputting data globally. To minimize misreporting, we validate against financial data, such as electricity and travel costs.
We collect our electricity consumption data in: a) kilowatt hours (kWh); b) cost in USD and c) office space in square meters. Our corporate Real Estate department is conducting an ongoing analysis on properties directly leased by Omnicom to determine energy efficiency on a property-by-property basis in those locations where Omnicom pays the direct electricity costs and has the ability to measure and monitor electricity usage. We use this data to rank properties by level of energy efficiency on two key data points: kWh cost per rentable square foot, and kWh cost per headcount.
