ERA publishes guidance on carbon reporting

Photo: AdobeStock/Gorodenkoff

The European Rental Association (ERA) has published its Carbon Reporting Guidance report, a guide for rental companies on reporting corporate carbon emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3.

Produced in collaboration with KPMG, the guidance has been developed specifically for the equipment rental industry and offers a step-by-step methodology for calculating corporate CO2 emissions in each scope. 

The Association said the document is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and provides a standardised framework for the industry to establish an equipment rental company carbon footprint.

The guidance report delves into direct emissions (Scope 1), indirect emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2), and all relevant categories of Scope 3. It also looks at the most significant emission sources for the rental industry and offers “tailored calculation formulas to quantify emissions while allowing flexibility to adapt to data availability.”

Alongside the report, the ERA is also launching a rental equipment benchmark database, which it said will provide a “valuable resource” for accurate emission estimation of equipment. 

The database compiles equipment data provided by rental companies, manufacturers and lifecycle assessment analyses and enables more accurate reporting of carbon emissions. ERA said it can also act as a tool to respond to client inquiries about project-specific emissions.

Michel Petitjean, secretary general, ERA, said, “With this initiative we are taking a pioneering step to help equipment rental companies not only in Europe but worldwide, to accurately measure and report about their carbon footprint in a fair and harmonised way.

“Ultimately it will also allow to quantify the contribution of the equipment rental sector to the fight against climate change.”

Douglas McLuckie, chair of the ERA Sustainability Committee, added, “The equipment rental industry plays a crucial role in the construction and other sectors, which is why it needs to be able to deliver the data on carbon footprint to the customers and public authorities alike.

“The ERA guidance will help rental companies to do that in a way that is transparent and agreed upon by the whole industry”.