Frequently Asked Questions


About Footprint Scanner™ users
About using the tool
About how it works

About Footprint Scanner™ users


Who should use this tool?
Any organization that is starting on the road toward reducing their emissions footprint or their Ecological Footprint, or any organization that wants an overview of their indirect emissions responsibility will benefit from using Footprint Scanner. It is especially suited for small and medium-sized organizations that do not have a budget of tens of thousands of Dollars to spend on consultants to help them figure out their Footprint. But even for those organizations that do, starting out their Footprinting efforts using Footprint Scanner will show them a relevant map of their world that will guide them to areas where they should focus their reduction efforts.

I am from a local government and already have an emissions inventory. Why should I care about this tool?
ICLEI is updating their local government GHG protocol to include (quote) “All emissions that are a consequence of the local government s operations, regardless of where those emissions occur.” As some of our work has shown, this may increase your emissions baseline by a factor of 2 or 3 or more, depending on your specific situation. Using Footprint Scanner is the fastest and easiest way to estimate your new baseline and start managing your emissions reductions goals based on the new insights it provides.

My organization has multiple sites in different states; can I still use Footprint Scanner™?
Absolutely. We do recommend that you perform a per-site analysis and collate the results afterwards, but you can also perform a single multi-state analysis. The indirect emissions resulting from electricity use will in that case be calculated using national averages, which may impair the accuracy of the results to a certain extend.

My organization is multi-national; can I still use Footprint Scanner™?
Footprint Scanner™ produces results that are valid for the United States only. We are interested in developing the tool further for use in Canada and may be able to address your special needs under a consulting project. We also have colleagues in Australia, the U.K. and in Japan that have developed similar tools that are applicable to those countries. Contact us to talk more about what we can do for you.


About using the tool


Nothing happens when I click the “I accept” button in the user license.
You probably do not have macro’s enabled in your Excel program. Footprint Scanner!™ is an Excel-based tool that makes extensive use of macros. The tool is launched in the same manner you would open any Excel spreadsheet. Upon opening, you will receive a warning that “The workbook you are opening contains macros”. Click on “Enable macros” to continue launching Footprint Scanner™

If buttons (different from drop-down menus) do not seem to be responding when you click on them, or of you did not receive the warning message mentioned before, macros may not have been enabled in your Excel settings. Consult the Help section in your version of Excel to learn how to enable macros, or ask your IT person in case you do not manage the permissions on your computer.

A small percentage of users may be using Excel in the manual calculation mode. These users need to set Excel calculations to automatic. This applies to you if the 2nd sector selection drop down box on the start page shows up empty.

Where should I source my input data?
Ask your financial director. In most organizations, the accounting system will provide descriptions with all expenditures that are descriptive enough to help decide with which product or service sector they are associated. In many cases you will not need to look at individual accounting line items but can assign entire expenditure groups to industry sectors.

What if I am still uncertain about which sector to assign a product or service to?
We recommend that you use the search function provided by the U.S. Census Bureau at http://www.census.gov/epcd/naics02/index.html, which will make it easy to find the sector a product or service belongs to. You can then correlate that sector with the list of sectors provided with Footprint Scanner.

About how it works


What are the Footprint Scanner™ direct emissions and emissions from electricity generation calculations based upon?
We use emissions factors from the California Climate Action Registry protocol for all direct (scope 1) emissions calculations and EPA emissions factors for electricity related emissions (scope 2).

What are the Footprint Scanner™ indirect emissions calculations based upon?
Indirect emissions calculations are based on a dataset that we have developed using Bureau of Economic Analysis provided input-output tables for the U.S. Economy that we overlay with emissions and Ecological Footprint data from various sources. The resulting datasets represent the average emissions and Ecological Footprint related to spending in those sectors. You can let the tool adjust these numbers - if applicable - taking into account inflation, the sales tax in the state you are located in, as well as the channel through which you purchased the products and services your organization uses.

How accurate are the indirect emissions results provided?
The results provided are based on sector averages. As such there is a high level of uncertainty involved with analyzing individual products or services, but this uncertainty decreases with the number of products and services you purchase from a given sector as well as with an increase in the number of sector you purchase products and services from. For most organizations this means that the total Footprint calculated will have an error of less than 20% while individual sector outcomes may have an error ranging from 20% or better to 50%. While this level of uncertainty may seem high, it is generally in the same range as the level of error that can be expected from performing a more complicated and costly Life Cycle Analysis on your supply chain.

Why have I never heard of this method of GHG calculation? Can I trust this?
Most organizations have only recently realized the need to understand the indirect emissions embedded in the products and services they use. With that, comes a slow growing awareness of the daunting task of assessing these emissions. As this awareness grows you will see the method we use become more well know in the U.S.. Our work is not novel. There has been significant work done on it at Carnegie Mellon University, at the University of Sydney Center for Integrated Sustainability Analysis, at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, and other places.

What if all the products we are buying are recycled, organic, and/or local?
We humbly bow to you for being the leader you are. We are interested in including Footprint factor adjustments in future releases of the tool and making those adjustments available to existing customers. Please contact us if you are interested in having specific products or services included or if you would like us to calculate specific situations. If you want to, you can also copy and paste the results from a Footprint Scanner™ analysis into an Excel worksheets and adjust the results based on your knowledge about the products your organization uses.

Can I get my results presented in a graphical format, rather than in tables?
Not at this time. We expect that most of you are very familiar with Excel and able to create any type of graph you like based on the results of your analysis. We encourage you to copy and paste your results into an Excel sheet and give them the graphical treatment you prefer.

I need results for a specific sector that is grouped together with others in your tool.
We can expand the list of sectors on request to include any of the (sub-) sectors listed in the sector list provided with Footprint Scanner™. Please contact us to talk about your sector of interest. Depending on the amount of work involved, there may be cost associated with expanding a sector.