Stakeholders, customers and regulators are all asking the same question: what is your organisation’s climate impact and what are you doing about it? A carbon footprint calculation is the starting line for any credible answer. It turns good intentions into a measurable baseline that you can manage, communicate and improve. Yet the first calculation often feels overwhelming: which scopes, which data, which emission factors.
In this joint blog post with Susanna Larkas (Taigawise) and Suvi Ferraz (Learnsy) we walk through the essentials and discuss how it affects organizational capabilities.
What a carbon footprint measures
A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organisation, product or service across its life cycle; from raw material extraction, procurement and production to logistics, use and end-of-life. The result is usually expressed in CO2 equivalents to make different greenhouse gases comparable on the same scale.
As Susanna says, carbon footprint reveals an organization’s most significant emission sources, which is important information you need before starting to reduce anything. It is worth remembering that a carbon footprint only captures climate impacts, while other environmental impacts fall outside its scope. Still, it is an important first step, and methods for understanding for example nature impacts of businesses are evolving.
Why bother? The business case
Susanna highlights that,calculating your carbon footprint is not just a compliance exercise; it pays back across the business. Concretely, already a robust calculation gives you:
● A source of competitiveness by meeting stakeholder expectations, standing out from competitors, unlocking cheaper financing, and exploring cost-saving opportunities.
● A management tool with deeper understanding of your own operations, fact-based investment decisions, credible target setting, and systematic sustainability leadership.
● A communication backbone providing factual proof points without greenwashing, stronger stakeholder trust, and compliance-ready disclosures (CSRD, ESRS).
The five-step calculation process
A reliable carbon footprint calculation follows a clear sequence:
Step 1. Planning defines the why, the scope, the timeline, the responsibilities and the tools. This is where most projects either succeed or stall.
Step 2. Data collection turns the plan into numbers, prioritising primary, activity-based data and documenting any gaps.
Step 3.Choosing emission factors means selecting reliable, up-to-date and regionally appropriate sources for every data point.
Step 4. Calculation multiplies activity data by factors using consistent units, with sanity checks for outliers.
Step 5. Results are reported transparently for internal steering, external communication and, increasingly, regulatory disclosures.
From number to action
The calculation itself is only the start. Once you know your hotspots, the path forward is to set realistic reduction targets, build a concrete reduction plan, and put monitoring in place so progress is visible year over year.
Anchor the work in the GHG Protocol’s reporting principles: relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency and accuracy. This way your carbon calculation numbers will hold up to internal scrutiny, external audits and CSRD-driven reporting alike.
How does this relate to organizational capabilities? During the discussion Suvi and Susanna spoke on how organisations discover that reliable data alone does not automatically lead to change. Carbon footprint calculations often remain concentrated and analyzed within sustainability, reporting or leadership teams, while operational teams struggle to connect the results to everyday decisions.
Different teams require different knowledge
A carbon footprint calculation only becomes useful when different functions understand how the results relate to their own decisions, which is something that Suvi has learnt when collaborating with different organizations. Effective climate capability-building therefore requires role-specific knowledge such as:
- procurement teams need supplier-emissions understanding
- finance teams need CSRD and climate-risk literacy
- product teams need lifecycle thinking
- leadership needs strategic interpretation
Continuous learning
As a conclusion to the discussion Suvi and Susanna spoke on how reporting requirements and sustainability methodologies continue to evolve rapidly. This means organizations need continuous learning systems rather than one-off sustainability initiatives. Building sustainability capability is about embedding learning into everyday work and decision-making. When employees understand how sustainability connects to their own responsibilities, organizations are better positioned to move from measurement to meaningful action.
Interested to learn more about carbon footprint calculation? Watch Laura Björk’s 45-minute Taigawise webinar “Hiilijalanjälki - mitä, miksi ja miten?” (in Finnish) for real-life examples (Granlund, YIT, Telia), practical do’s and dont’s at every step of CO2 calculation, and a Q&A on the most common pitfalls.
About the authors:
Susanna Larkas is a Sustainability Expert at Taigawise, a company that has supported dozens of organisations from their first footprint to fully integrated climate strategies. If you would like a partner for CO2 calculation itself or for what comes next, you can ask Susanna about organisational footprints (Scopes 1, 2 and 3), product-level footprints, expert-guided calculation and continuous yearly footprint services.
Suvi Ferraz is the CEO and Co-Founder of Learnsy. She is a purpose-driven entrepreneur committed to advancing sustainable business and expanding access to impactful learning. She is passionate about making sustainability education accessible to people and organisations worldwide.
