CSRD calculation examples

CSRD Case A: a small consultants firm

Major polluting activities and purchases

Scope 1, business trips:
– lease cars management (diesel, petrol, BEV)
– business trips of consultants (diesel, petrol)
– airflights (continental, intercontinental)
Scope 1, commuting:
– car, train, bike, BEV
Scope 2, electricity and heating:
– electricity from the grid
– electricity from own PV cells
– natural gas
Scope 3, major purchases:
– printing paper
– use of internet and storage in the cloud
– laptops

For the excel calculation tool see CSRD_tool_2025A3

Even with the assumption of a moderate growth of 10% from 2024 to 2029, it seems not easy to reduce the carbon footprint:
Total 2024: 170,500 kgCO2; 2029: 128,000 kg CO2.
Quick wins are (a) the switch of electricity from the grid to sustainable electricity sources, (b) the shift in lease cars from diesel to BEV, (c) a switch to a sustainable office that needs less gas for heating.
The main issue is how to reduce CO2 emissions from commuting, and consultants trips to the client, since only a few employees will invest in BEV in the coming 5 years.
So emphasis musty be on supporting work at home and at the same time keeping up the team spirit.

carbon footprint 2025

target carbon footprint 2030

CSRD Case B: a printing firm

Major polluting activities and purchases

Scope 1, business trips:
– lease cars management (diesel, petrol, BEV)
Scope 1, commuting:
– car, train, bike, BEV
Scope 2, electricity and heating:
– electricity from the grid
– electricity from own PV cells
– natural gas
Scope 3, major purchases:
– kraftliner
– testliner
– folding board
– PP-film
– PE-film
– PLA-film
– conventional ink, black & color,
– ink for inkjet, black & color
– varnish
– use of internet, storage in the cloud, laptops

For the excel calculation tool see CSRD_tool_2025B3

With a moderate growth of 10%, it is hardly possible for the printing company to reduce its carbon footprint, unless the printing company can convince its clients to change to more environmental friendly substrates (= the printing materials).
In our example:
Total 2024: 252,200 kgCO2; 2029: 195,600 kgCO2
where PE and PP has been replaced by rPE and rPP, and PLA has been replaced by PHA.

carbon footprint 2025

target carbon footprint 2030

Note 1. Here is the complexity that the end-of-life treatment must be taken into account (extra lines in the calculation sheet): “the Scope 3 downstream”, with ESRS E5 (resource use)
Note 2. Here is also the complexity that carbon footprint calculations don’t give the full picture of the effects related to “conservation of nature”: pollution and biodiversity, ESRS E2, E3 and E4, which is the reason to prefer the eco-costs as an indicator

The figures below show the results in eco-costs for ESRS E1, E2, E3, E4, E5 for the consulting company (left) and the printing company (right).
From these pictures it is clear that E1 (carbon footprint) and E5 (resource use, i.e. the use of fossil fuels) are the most important issues for the consulting company. For the printing company, E4 is the most important issue (biodiversity, i.e. avoidance of non-biodegradable materials).

Case A: the consultants company…………………………………………………………………..Case B: the printing company

CSRD Case C: manufacturing of end-user products (ERP systems)

Manufacturing plants of end-user products often have huge lists of suppliers. The simple approach of examples A and B is sufficient to asses the double-materiality of supplies, but is insufficient to establish your purchasing strategies as described at this website, and to manage progress.
In such cases you need the granularity of ERP systems to be able to ‘drill down’, and find data on the level of a specific component-supplier combination. CSRD must be integrated then with ERP, by assigning eco-costs and carbon footprint as attributes to the main supplies.
A good example of full integration is Company X in the Netherlands: their ERP solution of integrated sustainability management was already used in 2020, prior to CSRD, see adjacent screenshot.
Note 1. It is sufficient to have the top 50 supplies in terms of weight, since lower weights are not material (practical experience from LCA).
Note 2. When a product has energy consumption in the use phase, the Scope 3 downstream (use phase) might be reported separately in terms of double-materiality, see for example the LCA excel tool (the ‘Volvo tool’) of this website.

General remarks

(1) The project approach is: (step 1) collect data (step 2) make calculation with the tool (step 3) decide on what is ‘material’ and what is ‘not-material’ (in kg CO2 and in eco-costs, where high eco-costs are related to high financial risks), and decide on your mitigation strategy: what is first and what is next? (step 4) make you calculation for the next 5 years (example: the excel tool, sheet ‘calculation results 2029’) (step 5) write your mitigation plan with expected results, see sheet ‘overview results’ (step 6) do the compliance check
It is common sense that you take the ‘low hanging fruit’ first (e.g. start with a procurement strategy that includes CO2 emissions). A cleaver investment strategy is is bit more complex: see section 9.3 “timing of improvement projects” of the book “Eco-efficient Value creation“.

(2) Where possible, apply data which are readily available from your accounting (or ERP) system, and convert these data from euros to kilograms, liters, or kilometers by factors that are applicable to that year. The Idemat data in the tool are in IS units: m for length , s for time, kg for weight, MJ for electricity (in stead of kWh). So it is likely that you have to apply an extra conversion step.
Often you don’t know the kilograms for car fuels; apply than the norms for lease cars, lines A.070.03.101 trough A.070.03.401 of the Idemat file.

(3) There are a lot of details in the formal documents of the EU (the authors tried to add everything that they could think of). Depart, however, from your common sense, since (a) a lot of tables and lists are provided with the instruction ‘may’, rather than ‘shall’ (b) the basic assumption of your work is that pollution must be ‘material’ so things that are negligible can be left out. So what you report is your own decision, as long as you can prove that what you left out is ‘not-material’. So your calculation list must include ‘everything’ (material and not-material) what seems to be relevant to you and your accountant: you only know what is ‘not-material’ after your calculation.

(4) In ‘CSRD Essentials‘, page 33, “The importance of including value chain Impacts, Risks and Opportunities”, it is described that databases like Idemat must be used to get the multipliers that are needed for the calculations. On the long term, it is expected that every supplier can provide the required data of his products. However, the amount of calculations that are needed are that high, that it is expected that more than a decennium is needed to fill this data gap.

(5) The compliance check can be finalized at the end (don’t start your project with a compliance check), since the compliance is highly related to your double-materiality choices: this helps reduce the 1,400 data points to what is relevant for your company. Note further that: (a) many of these data points are not “shall disclose” but are “may disclose” (b) are not required the first year

(6) In LCA, so called ‘double counting’ is to be avoided. In CSRD, however, double counting is not an issue: it seems to be everywhere. It is embedded in the combination of E2, E3, and E4, as well as in the Scope 3 reporting on the value chain, upstream and downstream.