For businesses starting out on the journey to net zero, understanding how their performance is measured is key to reaching that goal. The industry average carbon footprint uses a unique set of data points to help businesses quickly understand what the carbon footprint looks like for an average business within their industry.

All businesses sit within specific sector(s). In the UK, these correspond to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. Our data matching process has produced Emissions Intensity Factors across each scope and sub-category (as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol) for each of the 88 second-level UK SIC sectors. In combination with an average of business’s revenue in the sector, this produces the industry average carbon footprint.

The industry average carbon footprint is derived from three main data sources:

The CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) is the global reporting hub for corporate carbon footprints. Over 10,000 businesses from all around the world have measured and reported their carbon footprints in a consistent format through the CDP. Each submission represents the output of months of work, the emissions data is analysed in compliance with the GHG Protocol, with most reports also being externally verified.

Sage Accounting is a cloud-based small to medium-sized business accounting software solution, serving hundreds of thousands of customers globally. This equates to billions of lines of vendor transactions between businesses, the ‘spend data’ required to help measure an organisation’s carbon footprint up to Scope 3, where business activity across the value chain must be interrogated. Sage has analysed a proportion of this spend data at the transactional level, using the Sage Earth carbon calculation engine, to derive partial* carbon footprints for thousands of businesses, across industries and regions.

* The footprints are partial because without user involvement, the engine cannot process non-transactional emissions like commuting.

All businesses spend transactions are analysed against our industry leading EIF taxonomy (including publicly available ONS data), matching the spend descriptions and accounting codes wherever possible. This matching process, in combination with the CDP data, allows us to see what proportion of total emissions have been identified across the thousands of businesses being analysed. This produces a weighting factor, allowing the datasets to be combined, helping reduce the larger business sample bias in the CDP data.

Currently, the industry average carbon footprint focuses on upstream emissions measurement, from Scopes 1 and 2, Scope 3.1 and 3.4 - 3.7. With more users, our methodology and datasets will be able to expand and become more robust over time, leading to more visibility across other Scope 3 categories. The industry average carbon footprint allows a business to instantly see the estimated scale and distribution of emissions for the average business in their industry. The emissions are broken down as follows:

What is the benefit of an industry average carbon footprint?

The industry average carbon footprint helps businesses understand what the average carbon footprint is for a business in their industry.

How do you estimate my industry average carbon footprint?

We use an anonymised combination of data from CDP (the global reporting hub for corporate carbon footprints), customer data from Sage Accounting and Sage Earth, and the UK Office for National Statistics (the ONS).

We analyse how Sage Accounting customers, across 88 different Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities (SIC) code sectors, have categorised their spending. Next, we multiply this spending by the appropriate Emissions Intensity Factors (EIFs) to generate estimates of their carbon footprints. Then we use the emissions of at least 10 businesses in each sector to estimate the industry average.

How do you define industry sectors?

We use a condensed list of SIC codes, as defined by the UK Office of National Statistics. You can find a full list of SIC codes here.

What size and type of business is the industry average carbon footprint most useful for?

Our calculations are designed for small to medium-sized businesses. That’s businesses of up to 250 employees or with an annual revenue of up to £50,000,000.

The industry average carbon footprint is suitable for businesses operating in most sectors, as defined in the UK list of SIC codes. However, it’s not well suited to the agricultural sector. This is because of the complexities in this industry and the types of emissions involved.

Do you consider my business location when calculating my industry average carbon footprint?

At the moment, we can’t use emissions factors specific to location. This is because of the nature of the datasets available and the way the data is added together. In future, we hope to be able to identify footprint trends by UK region.

My business also operates overseas, does the industry average carbon footprint account for this?

Most of the data used to derive the industry averages comes from UK sources and is UK specific. Therefore, your industry average carbon footprint will be less accurate if your business operates internationally.