Certain business setups raise specific questions about how to report emissions accurately. This article covers the three most common: remote and home-based businesses, businesses in shared offices, and seasonal operations.
Remote and Home-Based Businesses
Remote businesses often assume their environmental impact is minimal — but digital operations create real emissions that need measuring.
Your digital footprint
Every video call, email, and file stored in the cloud relies on energy-intensive data centres. The servers powering your daily operations, along with laptops and devices, all contribute to climate change through energy use and manufacturing.
Your home office
A portion of your home’s energy use during work hours — heating, cooling, powering equipment — counts toward your business footprint. Additionally, every service you purchase, from cloud storage to professional services, carries its own environmental impact.
How to report
Reporting is straightforward. You submit your business spending data — technology subscriptions, equipment purchases, and your utility bill payments. You do not need to provide meter readings or calculate kWh yourself. Green Project converts your spend figures into emissions estimates on the back end, using market pricing and emission factors.
Remote work can be more environmentally friendly than traditional offices, but it still has measurable impacts worth tracking. Getting started is simpler than you think, and the insights gained can help your business operate more efficiently.
Shared Office Spaces
Reporting emissions in a shared office is simpler than it sounds. The key is your rent payments.
When you rent office space, your rent payment typically includes utilities and common area costs. Simply reporting your rent payments to Green Project captures your proportional share of the building’s environmental impact. There is no need to calculate complex allocations or request utility data from your landlord.
This approach works because:
Your rent reflects your portion of the building’s resources
Building-wide emissions can be calculated from your rent costs
It is a standardised approach used across industries
You don’t need to worry about separating shared utilities
In addition to rent, track:
Any additional business-specific utility payments
Your own equipment and technology costs
Business-specific supplies and services
The process is designed to be straightforward — no complicated calculations needed. The system handles the conversion of rent costs into emissions data.
Seasonal Businesses
Seasonal fluctuations are not a barrier to emissions reporting. Even with varying operations, your business has a year-round environmental impact that needs tracking.
The key is providing complete annual data — both peak-season expenses and quieter periods. Your business still generates environmental impacts during slow periods through:
Maintenance costs
Storage expenses
Ongoing service contracts
Look at your full year of operations, including all costs, service contracts, and maintenance expenses. This comprehensive view helps you understand your true environmental impact and often reveals patterns that can help you optimise operations across all seasons.