Greenhouse Gas Disclosure

From Creative’s President & CEO

Creative’s commitment to being a good steward of resources includes how our work directly impacts our climate. Creative’s climate change work supports USAID’s whole-of-agency approach, advancing equitable and ambitious actions to confront the climate crisis through targeted direct action and systems change.

Additionally, Creative looks inward to reflect on our business activities and their relationship with the environment. In 2022, we committed to measure and publicly disclose our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, with the results published here. This first step helps us to prepare for a long-term systematic approach to measure, review and improve our environmental impact. In the future, we aim to assess a larger number of our projects to provide a more complete picture of our carbon footprint. We are starting the conversation around setting and achieving science-based reduction targets that will have a positive impact on our need to reduce the causes of climate change.

Peace,

Leland Kruvant

Our Footprint

Creative’s first greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions measurements cover Fiscal Year 2022 of U.S. operations in the Washington, D.C., region, which account for our Scope 1 and 2 as per the GHG protocol guidelines. Also included are major relevant sources for Scope 3 emissions, specifically all business travel – including project and business growth-related travel from Headquarters – and HQ employee commutes. However, other sources (including waste management and purchased goods) were not included in this initial scope.

In addition to HQ operations, we included a selection of our existing U.S. government-funded projects. Project selection was carried out considering data availability, data quality and geographical priorities. Based on these criteria, this initial measure focused on programs in Honduras, Guatemala and Nigeria. Taken together, this represents about 15 percent of our global operations.

map_gas-1024x538 Given that our base year is FY22, we recognize that our first-year measurement was affected by global conditions, most specifically COVID-19 travel restrictions and fluctuating remote work policies, which will continue to shift in future years. In 2022, Creative moved its Headquarters to an environmentally certified building in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a factor that positively impacted our GHG emissions footprint. As we embark on this long-term commitment to measure and report our footprint, we will continue to learn about impacts and extend the scope of our measurements.

The graph below shows our main sources of emissions for this measurement’s scope:

graph_gas

Creative’s total footprint for the scope included in the FY2022 measurement (HQ operations in the United States and program work in three countries) is 1,224 Metric Tons of Carbon equivalent (MTCO2e). As noted above, this calculation is for approximately 15 percent of Creative’s global operations. With this in mind, Creative’s global footprint (Scopes 1, 2 and 3) is currently estimated between 1,401 and 2,047 metric tons. This equates to approximately 1.7 to 2.59 MTCO2e per employee: an average of 2.18 MTCO2e per employee.

For subsequent annual measurement efforts, we plan to include more of our projects by establishing processes and procedures that will ensure data availability and quality across our portfolio. FY22 will be our base year to start discussing and implementing improvement initiatives and establish science-based goals to do our part towards a more sustainable planet. Once our baseline is established, our goals will be set as a percent reduction at least 1% reduction per employee (average MTCO2e per employee) to be reviewed annually. This will include developing adequate indicators, such as travel per employee or electricity emissions per office square meter, that allow us to measure our footprint and efforts in a reliable manner.

We are excited to embark on this long-term commitment.

Getting the numbers right

As part of our commitment to comply with GHG Protocol’s technical and data quality standards, Creative selected Futuris Consulting, a Costa Rica-based company to help with an initial calculation of Creative’s carbon footprint. With 15 years of experience working with clients like Banco Nacional, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, BID Invest and ecoBusiness Fund, Futuris Consulting provides world-class services with local passion and commitment from a multidisciplinary team of sustainability consultants.

Futuris Consulting provided technical support, established boundaries and measured Creative’s carbon footprint in alignment with the GHG protocol, as required by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). They also reviewed data quality and provided input to improve future assessments. We look forward to including Futuris’ recommendations to better estimate our footprint and to take adequate preventive and mitigating measures.  

 

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