Carbon footprint analysis

Where does the regulation come from?

The regulation comes from Article 75 of the Law n° 2010-788 of July, 12th 2010 supporting the French national commitment to act for the environment (ENE – Grenelle 2) and creating articles L. 229-25 and L 229-26 of the Environment Code.

The enforcement decree stating the application rules for Carbon footprint assessments (R229-46 - R22-50) was established on July 11th 2011. This decree specifies the reporting of necessary methodological elements for complying with the law, which was lastly updated in March 2015 to give birth to the 3bis version of the guide).

Who is affected by the obligation?

• Every private French entity of more than 500 employees (250 for public entities and overseas territories) according to the  workforce on December 31st of year preceding the assessment (workforce definition complying with the Labour Code).
• Every legal person under public law of over 250 people.  
• The State, regions and departments, urban communities, collectivities of more than 50,000 inhabitants.

Keep in mind that if you belong to one of these categories and do not assess your carbon footprint, you will face requests from your prefects, and you will face sanctions according to the draft law on the energy transition. 

When is it due?

It is not too late to assess your carbon footprint! Do not hesitate to rely on us to help you conform rapidly and effectively with this obligation.

How to take advantage of this regulation?

Measure to reduce emission and anticipate

• Share the approach inside your organisation to motivate the teams 
• Communicate through your CSR report 
• Boost and drive change inside your organisation through a carbon-focused action plan
• Coordinate the approaches and data related to the obligations (Carbon footprint and Energy audits) 
• Incoming sanctions: in the context of anticipating new developments in regulations we stay focused on future changes related to the energy transition law. The current modifications tend to change the future timescale and format of reporting emissions an to reinforce the obligation by applying sanctions.
• Improve the communication systems of the company

Differences between the french mandatory Carbon footprint assessment (BEGES) and a GHG emissions assessment:

The BEGES is compulsory and report on the emissions resulting from scope 1 and 2.

Objective : complying with the commitment n°51 of the Grenelle II that stated the generalisation of carbon footprint assessments. The aim is to produce a diagnosis of the entity's emissions in order to identify potential actions to reduce its carbon footprint. 

The more general carbon footprint assessment is a measure of the GHG emissions of an entity and a tool that includes a larger scope (1, 2 and 3)

Objective : offering a way to quantify GHG emissions and to identify potential actions to reduce them. Moving towards a low-carbon transition.