Sector-Specific Guidance for Corporate Footprints

The general TGO requirements tell every organization how to set boundaries and calculate. They do not tell a cement plant where its process emissions come from, or a dairy farm how to handle enteric methane. For that, TGO published a companion volume in 2015: the Manual for Preparing a Corporate Carbon Footprint by Industry Sector (คู่มือการจัดทำคาร์บอนฟุตพริ้นท์ขององค์กรรายสาขาอุตสาหกรรม). Each chapter was written by academic specialists and walks through boundary setting and source identification for one sector. This article is a map of that manual rather than a summary of every chapter: it shows what kind of sector-specific detail exists and where to find it, so you can decide whether your organization needs it. Page numbers refer to the printed page numbers in the manual.

#What the manual covers

The table of contents lists thirteen chapters. Eleven are sector chapters: petroleum and petrochemicals (p.1), cement (p.17), construction materials (p.57), ceramics (p.79), electronics (p.89), pulp and paper (p.101), corrugated packaging (p.111), food (p.121), sugar (p.143), livestock (p.151) and power plants (p.175). Two closing chapters cover preparing for verification (p.183) and verification itself (p.209) (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, table of contents p.(5)).

The sector chapters share a structure: an introduction to the industry, a section on defining the organizational boundary with sector-typical facilities, a section identifying emission and removal activities by category, and worked calculation guidance. What differs is the detail. The examples below show the kind of detail each chapter adds.

#Cement: process emissions and a wide boundary

The cement chapter opens with context: Thailand produced 36.15 million tonnes of cement in 2014 (B.E. 2557) and exported 6.85 million tonnes, and the processes involved consume raw materials and fuel and involve chemical reactions that release greenhouse gases (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.17-18). It explains that production can be wet or dry process, that Thai plants use only the dry process because the wet process consumes more energy, and that dry-process production is split into clinker production and cement grinding, starting with quarrying limestone, shale and clay (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.18).

The boundary section is the part most organizations will find useful, because it lists what a cement company under operational control typically has to include: quarries with their buildings and machinery, identified from the mining concession; the cement plant covering clinker, grinding, packing and support, identified from the factory licence (Ror.Ngor.4); office buildings; service buildings; staff housing; public areas; and vehicles, including mobile machinery and vehicles held under long-term lease, identified from vehicle registration and lease documents (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.23-24). The chapter then states that a corporate footprint must at minimum cover CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, SF6 and NF3, and that direct emissions include fuel combustion in boilers and kilns, chemical reactions in processes the organization operates, decomposition of organic matter on site, and use or leakage of gases from equipment (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.25-26).

#Petroleum and petrochemicals: composition-based methods

The first chapter points to methods that go beyond a single emission factor. For gaseous fuels with several hydrocarbon components, it describes calculation from fuel composition on the same principle as a combustion balance, referring readers to the API Compendium of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation Methodologies for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry (2009) and the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, and notes that N2O from combustion should also be calculated (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.8). It also gives a practical rule for fire suppressants that are greenhouse gases: because the quantity released usually cannot be measured directly, use the quantity refilled into extinguishers as the quantity released (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.8).

#Food: many small direct sources

The food chapter describes the industry as a high emitter because of energy, water, packaging and agricultural, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture raw materials, including seasonings (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.121). Its value is in the long list of category 1 sources that a food plant can overlook: on-site generation of electricity, heat and steam; fuel in owned or leased equipment such as diesel generators and gas-fired furnaces; LPG used for cooking; process emissions from heating carbonate raw materials such as dolomite, limestone and soda ash; mobile combustion in company vehicles; fugitive emissions from refrigerant joints and maintenance; SF6 leakage from switchgear; CO2 fire extinguishers; methane from wastewater treatment and septic tanks; and emissions from fertilizer or cleaning chemicals used on site (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.123-124). The chapter's example table lists natural gas in a co-generator and boiler, coal, gasoline in executive cars, CO2 extinguishers and fuel oil as typical category 1 sources for one plant (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.124).

#Livestock: enteric fermentation and manure

The livestock chapter starts from national data. Thailand's Second National Communication to the UNFCCC (2010) found that livestock accounted for 26 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalent, split into 16 percent from enteric fermentation and 10 percent from manure management, making it the second-largest agricultural source after rice cultivation (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.151). It then presents a case study of a large, well-managed dairy farm that grows its own feed, chosen because most Thai dairy farms are small to medium with around 20 milking cows each (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.152). For the calculations it points to IPCC 2006 defaults, for example nitrogen excretion rates from Table 10.19 and typical animal mass from Tables 10A-4 to 10A-9 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.166). If your organization keeps animals, this chapter is where the specific parameters live.

#Power plants: the boundary is a licence

For power generation the chapter is direct: fuel combustion to generate electricity is the activity with the largest emissions (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.175). It defines the organization as the power plant or electricity operator and suggests using the factory licence (Ror.Ngor.4) or the controlled energy production licence to fix the geographic boundary (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.175-176). Category 1 covers stationary and mobile combustion, with natural gas as the main fuel in Thailand and diesel, fuel oil, palm oil and coal as other or backup fuels. Category 2 includes electricity imported for administration buildings or during shutdowns and blackouts, calculated as kWh times the grid factor, and imported steam or chilled water, for which the plant must ask its supplier for a factor in kgCO2 per tonne or per kWh (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, p.176).

#Preparing for verification

The closing chapters connect sector work to assurance. Chapter 12 explains that disclosures such as CDP require verified figures, and that carbon credits, whether CERs from the Clean Development Mechanism, VERs under international voluntary standards or T-VERs under the Thai voluntary scheme, also depend on third-party verification for credibility (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.183-184). It defines verification as a systematic, independent and documented process for assessing the accuracy of a GHG assertion against agreed criteria, and describes the two assurance levels: reasonable assurance checks all the data used in the assessment, while limited assurance checks only part of it. Which level to choose depends on the use: trading credits requires reasonable assurance, while reporting in an environmental, sustainability or GRI report can use limited assurance (TGO Sector Manual, 2015, pp.184-185).

#Using the manual

The practical advice is simple. Read the general requirements first. Then open the chapter for your sector and use its facility list and source list as a checklist against your own site. In CarbonBiz, the special source modules for septic tanks, wastewater, fertilizer and refrigerant leaks, and the per-activity calculation method tag, exist precisely because the sector chapters show how often these smaller sources are missed.