18 January 2021 
Ashley Shelbrooke, HEPA and Project Specialist
For a number of years, the UK Universities Purchasing Consortia (UKUPC) has been providing their membership with annual Scope 3 emission reports for monitoring and reporting purposes. The reports are issued following a process of collecting and analysing members non-pay spend data and then further breaking the spend down into Proc HE level 2 categories.
The spend against each Proc HE code is mapped to a defined list of DEFRA categories for which conversion factors - calculating value to carbon - are allocated. This data is then input to the Higher Education Supply Chain Emissions tool (HESCET) where the final report is produced.
Some institutions undertake this process themselves using the HESCET tool.
Universities use the report in a number of ways and the content will be useful to procurement, estates, and sustainability teams.
Over the past year, members of the Responsible Procurement Group Scope 3 sub-group, UKUPC, the Environmental Association for Universities and colleges (EAUC) and HEPA have been coordinating with DEFRA and academics to update the conversion factors used in the HESCET tool.
The conversion factors used had not been updated since 2009. Since then, the materials, methods of production and in some cases logistical methods of delivery have changed drastically. The now updated factors take these changes into account.
In 2009, 75 categories were established by DEFRA to break down and map spend levels to in the calculation process; the number of categories has now increased to 311. Additionally, more geographical zones have been included (previously it was just UK, EU or Rest of world). This all means that the reports that higher education institutions will receive will have a higher level of accuracy and detail.
Whilst the changes will improve the accuracy of the information provided it will also, inevitably, result in some cases of large differences in figures when compared to previous years and this should be noted
Further information regarding year-on-year changes to conversion factors is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting
The tool is now formally owned by HEPA / BUFDG and as such, all updates to calculations can now be managed and controlled centrally.
Please see here.
