Learning Carbon Accounting From Terra.do
It’s been a while since I’ve had an opportunity to share my latest climate-related musings, for a variety of reasons but not for a lack of learning! In fact, I recently completed the Terra.do Carbon Accounting and Reduction course taught by David Jaber of Climate Positive Consulting. What follows is a brief summary of the course and my learnings.
Course Summary
The course was a short four-week commitment, with one hour of course instruction per week plus another 90 minutes of Q&A/office hours. This was workable with a full-time working schedule. There were also readings and homework assignments, but with a full week to complete them and ask questions via Slack and email asynchronously, I found it manageable. The readings were full of links that allowed the student to dive as deeply as they wished into the subject material, either during the course or in the future.
David, the instructor, founded Climate Positive Consulting in 2009 and consults with a variety of companies, helping them account for and reduce their carbon emissions from various sources. As such, he’s quite knowledgeable about the subject and pulled many examples from his direct experience in the field.
Course Content
The content itself covered carbon accounting from A to Z:
Week 1 - Climate Fundamentals, Business Implications, Examples in Action
Week 2 - GHG Accounting Fundamentals & Process, Scopes
Week 3 - GHG Accounting Tools, Goals & Science-Based Targets, Offsets & Carbon Removal
Week 4 - Action Plan Development, Reduction Actions, Organizational Management
In one hour per week, David had to fly through the course material very quickly, so there wasn’t a lot of depth to the topics covered in class. However, as mentioned the readings provided much more detail, and David was very available to answer questions throughout the course.
Coursework
In addition to the weekly lessons, there were three homework activities, one assigned after each of the first three lessons.
The first was a climate disclosure project, where we selected a company in the Climate Disclosure Project database. While I was aware of corporate climate plans coming into the course, I was not aware of the CDP site, which is a treasure trove of corporate climate data. I selected the local industrial gases company Air Products. Throwing together a short slide deck based on their climate plan was not especially challenging, but I learned a lot just going through some climate reports in the CDP database. Air Products’ Climate Disclosure
The second assignment was a subset of carbon accounting calculations in a spreadsheet for a hypothetical company. This included calculations to convert certain Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions of different greenhouse gases into carbon dioxide equivalents, including unit conversions. For someone who has spent a lot of time on spreadsheet calculations, this is quick work. For those who haven’t, this probably felt like a cross between high school math and accounting. I won’t post spreadsheet here so as not to spoil it for future students.
The third project, which was completed in groups of two, was probably the deepest dive of the three. I was paired with Amy Hyde, a communications veteran based in the SF Bay Area transitioning into the climate sector. We were to pick out a company with a committed climate plan, assess their progress, and make recommendations for how to proceed with their climate goals.
We considered companies across a variety of industries before settling on the controversial News Corp. If you search for “News Corp climate” online, you find a tremendous amount of negativity directed as Rupert Murdoch (a self-proclaimed “climate change skeptic”) and his companies, including News Corp and, more notably, Fox Corp. News Corp holds a number of media and publishing companies, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, which have historically followed their owner’s skepticism when it comes to climate science.
Surprisingly, the Australia-based News Corp has declared a public science-based target and publishes annual CDP climate reports. There was a lot of coverage of the announcement in Australia, suggesting that internal employees and shifting public opinion persuaded leadership to commit to significant Scope 1, 2, and 3 reductions by 2030 and Net Zero emissions by 2050. This is perhaps perplexing to those familiar with the coverage of climate change by media companies owned by News Corp or Fox Corp, its sister in the Murdoch empire. As such, this is not as simple as your average greenwashing scheme.
As the publisher of many print magazines and newspapers not fully converted to digital, it’s not shocking to see emissions hot spots related to the use of paper. To its credit, News Corp has taken steps towards a more circular lifecycle for its paper products and procured significant amounts of carbon free electricity to power its operations. However, even if the company beats its 2030 and 2050 climate goals, many will forever see News Corp’s climate impact in the red due to its continued undermining of climate science and solutions.
Takeaways
Overall, I enjoyed the course and am glad I took it. Honestly, educational content in most subjects these days is freely available on the internet, and carbon accounting is no exception. However, a good course cuts through the garbage and puts the materials together to help you learn the subject, and this course certainly accomplished that. I learned a lot from the course materials themselves but also from the extra materials introduced to us for further reading. I wasn’t doing it for the certificate; I wanted to pick up the knowledge and learn the skills, and to that end I am satisfied. I certainly don’t feel like I’m ready to run my own carbon accounting firm, but I do feel like I know enough to be dangerous, that I know how to get started.
There are some quirks in the Terra.do site, but I found the Terra.do team and the Slack community to be very helpful. We have had a couple of small events after the course’s conclusion (e.g. guest speakers), but given the limited instruction time I did not get well acquainted with my classmates (other than Amy, who was great).
While I still don’t find the introductory 12-week Learning for Action course of interest, I find myself seeking out other Terra.do specialty courses. For example, there is a software engineering course that sounds very data heavy, which I may enroll in the next time it’s open.