Every physical asset carries carbon emitted in raw material extraction, transport and manufacture. Embodied carbon is not mandated by the GHG Protocol, but public sector organisations should consider and eventually account for it to discourage non-essential asset consumption, drive lower-carbon procurement and reflect the true carbon cost of asset consumption. Because an embodied carbon balance sheet is impractical, organisations that account for it should initially recognise it on purchase and keep their accounting policy on the website, particularly where only some assets are covered; PAS 2050 offers a lifecycle method and apportionment approaches can be adopted. Embodied water, energy and other resources in assets are the resource equivalent of Scope 3. Quantified reporting of embodied resources will not be required in the short term given the lack of standards, but voluntary sections may later become compulsory, so entities should consider consistency now. Narrative reporting of indirect impacts is permitted alongside the numbers; best practice sets concise, measurable targets to reduce indirect use of finite resources and reports progress against them in the annual report, may set targets on high-impact assets even without exact resource translation, and, for bodies whose policies affect third-party resource use, could set and report targets over that third-party use.
The graph holds this control, the 0 it maps to, and the evidence behind each claim, over MCP and REST.