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Vodafone Group Plc
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Carbon enablement Carbon enablement – GHG savings for customers enabled by our green digital solutions Over the last few years Vodafone has been estimating the potential global carbon abatement impact of their products and services with the support of The Carbon Trust, an external consultant. Carbon abatement, also known as enablement or avoided emissions, is an estimated measurement of carbon savings resulting from the use of products and services. It is specifically the measurement of the avoidance or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise have occurred had these connections and services in these use cases not been in place. An estimate of the carbon abatement impact for each use case is calculated by multiplying product volume (e.g., number of IoT connections) by a carbon abatement factor. A use case is a proposition within Vodafone’s business customer portfolio that has the potential to reduce carbon emissions (e.g., Smart metering, Fleet management, Health-care monitoring). Vodafone has been working with The Carbon Trust to define and identify these use cases, develop methodologies and estimate the associated carbon abatement impact by applying a carbon factor to each use case. The Carbon Trust is a third-party expert in the field of carbon measurement, and we rely on their expertise to determine the carbon abatement potential of the use case.
The carbon abatement factor for each use case is mainly informed by either an external study, an internal Vodafone study or documented expert assumptions. For use cases where the location of the connection is relevant to the carbon abatement factor, a country-specific input is included (e.g., for Fleet Management, the carbon abatement factor includes average annual emissions for a car in the country where the connection is located). For countries where insufficient data is available, proxies or other assumptions have been substituted. We strive to develop measures of carbon enablement through collaboration with carbon experts and technology sector industry peers. As the science of measuring carbon enablement develops, we recognise ongoing limitations with our current approach, and will continue to evolve our methodology to address them in light of emerging industry standards. These limitations include: – We measure carbon abatement on a gross estimate basis. This means that the carbon emissions avoided are not net of the lifecycle carbon emissions of the product or service itself. – We do not account for any potential rebound effects. This means we do not measure any possible emissions associated with unintended changes of behaviour that could result from the implementation of the products or services. As the methodology for measuring carbon enablement emissions is still developing and industry standards may change, we will continue to evolve our methodology. This may result in a need to amend or update our disclosures and/or our ESG ambitions, goals, commitments and/or targets or our evaluation of progress against these.
We do not claim to be solely attributable for the carbon emissions avoided by the products and services we sell. Rather, we calculate carbon abatement so that we can better understand the potential scale of the carbon emissions that could be avoided, as a measure of how Vodafone contributes to the decarbonisation of society. Our carbon enablement metric has not been externally assured this year. Our carbon enablement target and metrics are currently under review in light of evolving methodologies for measuring the ‘net carbon impact’ of digital solutions.
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