1. What is a Service Carbon Footprint (SCF)?
A Service Carbon Footprint (SCF) measures the greenhouse gas emissions associated with delivering a specific service, such as consulting, IT support, or facilities management. Rather than estimating emissions from how much a customer spends with you, an SCF ties emissions to the work actually performed to deliver the service, using reference units like hours worked, full-time equivalents (FTEs), or service volumes.
This gives your customers a more accurate, decision-useful number than a generic spend-based estimate, and gives you a clearer way to show the impact of efficiency improvements over time.
2. How is an SCF different from a spend-based emissions estimate?
Spend-based estimates allocate emissions based on how much a customer pays you. This is quick to calculate but assumes money spent correlates with emissions, which is often not true for services: pricing varies by geography, contract structure, and market dynamics even when the underlying work is similar.
An SCF instead allocates emissions based on how the service is delivered (hours, FTEs, volumes), which produces a more accurate and more defensible number, and one that reflects real changes in how you deliver the service rather than just changes in price.
3. How is an SCF different from a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)?
A PCF measures the emissions associated with producing and delivering a physical good. An SCF measures the emissions associated with delivering a service. Both follow the same underlying principle of tying emissions to real activity rather than spend, and together they give a fuller picture of Scope 3 emissions across goods and services.
4. How is an SCF related to my Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF)?
Your CCF is your company-wide emissions inventory across all activities. Your SCF takes that inventory (or your CDP disclosure, sustainability report, or a fresh calculation through Green Project’s free CCF tool if you haven’t measured emissions before) and allocates a share of it to one specific service, based on how much of your company’s activity that service represents.
If you haven’t calculated a CCF yet, that’s not a blocker: the platform can help you establish a baseline first and then derive the SCF from it.
5. What types of services can be measured with an SCF?
SCFs work best for services where delivery can be described using operational data, for example professional services, IT and software, consulting, facilities support, logistics, and other people- or office-based services. If your service’s activity can be expressed in hours, FTEs, or a similar volume metric, it can typically be assessed with an SCF.
6. What is a “functional unit” and how do I choose one?
A functional unit describes what you deliver and how a customer consumes your service, for example a consulting hour, a transaction, an API call, or a room-night. The platform will suggest a functional unit for your service category, and you can adjust it if something more specific fits better.
A good functional unit is measurable, representative of the service, repeatable across reporting periods, and useful for the decisions your customer needs to make.
7. What is an “allocation unit”, and how does allocation work?
An allocation unit is the internal driver used to split your company-wide emissions across the different services you deliver, for example compute hours for a SaaS business, billable hours for a professional services firm, or floor area for a facilities provider.
The platform applies your allocation unit to work out what share of your total emissions belongs to the specific service being requested, then divides that by your functional unit to produce the final SCF. Physical drivers (compute, space, labour) are preferred where available; revenue-based allocation is used only as a fallback when nothing more specific exists.
8. What data do I need to provide?
Typically, you’ll be asked for:
The service name and category (the platform will suggest a category and functional unit – you confirm or adjust).
The reporting period.
Total revenue and/or volume for that specific service within the period.
Your existing emissions baseline (CDP disclosure, sustainability report, or a Green Project CCF) so emissions can be allocated to the service.
You do not need to be a carbon accounting expert to complete this. The platform pre-fills what it can and only asks you for the inputs it cannot infer.
9. Can I use estimates if I don’t have exact data, like hours worked?
Yes. Estimation is acceptable and often unavoidable, especially early on. Use standardized rules where you can (average hours per engagement type, typical staff allocation by role, benchmarked utilization), be consistent from one period to the next, and note where a figure is measured versus modelled versus inferred. Consistency matters more than precision, and you can refine your inputs over time as your own data collection matures.
10. Do I need to disclose my revenue to calculate an SCF?
Not necessarily. If you can provide complete activity-based data for the service (for example, staff time or units delivered), your SCF can be calculated directly from that activity data without revenue. Revenue-based allocation is a fallback used when more specific activity data isn’t available, not a requirement.
11. Is my SCF shared with every customer, or just the one who requested it?
An SCF can be customer-specific. When you calculate an SCF, you choose which customer(s) it is shared with, so you’re in control of visibility rather than having a single number broadcast to everyone you work with.
12. What’s the difference between the free and premium SCF tools?
Green Project offers SCF calculation at more than one level of methodological depth:
A lighter-touch, free tool for a first SCF: it derives your service-level emissions top-down from your existing corporate inventory, using a simplified functional unit and hybrid data sources. This is a fast way to get a credible first number.
A more advanced, premium tool (with optional consultancy support) for a fully methodologically complete SCF: bottom-up activity data, capital assets included, a documented allocation hierarchy, and full alignment with recognized product-footprint data standards. This level is appropriate when your customer needs audit-ready, comparable data or a specific certification/tender use case.
If your first, simpler SCF isn’t precise enough for a particular customer requirement, you can upgrade to the more advanced calculation for that service without starting over.
13. Are SCFs auditable, and can they be used in Scope 3 reporting?
Yes. When calculated using a consistent methodology, documented assumptions, and a clear data trail, an SCF can support audit-ready Scope 3 reporting and can replace a generic spend-based estimate in your customer’s Purchased Goods and Services category once it passes their data quality checks.
14. What support is available if I get stuck?
You do not need to figure this out alone. Support is available at every stage:
Supplier Academy: step-by-step guides and worked examples, available anytime at support.greenprojecttech.com.
In-platform chat: live support while you’re entering data.
Email: [email protected]
One-on-one call: book time with a Green Project specialist if your service or data situation is more complex.
Green Project manages supplier support on behalf of your customer. If you have a question about the SCF process feel free to contact us.
15. If I switch from spend-based estimates to SCFs, do I need to restate prior years?
Not necessarily, but it’s often recommended. Three options are commonly used: keep prior years on the old method and simply disclose the methodology change (expect a visible step change); recalculate only the most material categories for better trend comparability with limited effort; or fully restate prior years using historical spend/activity data for the cleanest, most defensible time series. Most mature reporting programs land on partial or full restatement once their SCFs stabilize.
16. How do hybrid reference units work when internal data is incomplete?
SCFs are designed to accept more than one type of reference unit (hours, FTEs, transactions, spend) so they can be built even when the ideal data isn’t fully available yet. Best practice is to use the most granular unit you have, document which unit was used, include a data-completeness indicator (actual vs. estimated) and vintage (year, boundary, methodology) with each result, and keep a clear line back to spend so the numbers can be reconciled during Scope 3 audits.