Verification Statement
Faber Maunsell has undertaken an independent verification of the CO2 emissions reporting of Friends Provident Life & Pensions for the 2008 calendar year. The verification has been carried out against the GHG Reporting Protocol and its five principles:
- Relevance
- Consistency
- Transparency
- Accuracy
- Completeness
This statement is a summary of the verification process.
Friends Provident Life & Pensions currently report on their emissions from the majority of buildings they occupy and elements of their business travel. The reported figures are published in a number of forms (hard copy in reports and electronically via the FP website and CR microsite) and are easily accessible to both internal and external stakeholders and general interested parties.
This year, whilst the portfolio of buildings has been reduced since the last reporting period, data capture from retained buildings has improved markedly. Improvements have been made to the collection and reporting of data by now capturing all material Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, which were previously not reported in their entirety.
Further improvements in reporting this year have seen a significant increase in transparency with clearer definitions of what is included and what is not being provided.
The accuracy of the reported emissions is considered to be high this year with no estimations of data and a fairly low probability of error. All reported figures are to be reviewed by the internal auditing department prior to publication adding to their accuracy.
The data provided is relevant to the high level requirements of the Executive Board and external parties for decision-making purposes.
There is however some room for improvement in a number of key areas. Firstly, a known over-reporting of an element of Scope 1 emissions exists which reduces their accuracy. Refining the capture of Scope 1 emissions should now be a priority.
In addition, although FPLP report on and provide a comparison of previous year’s emissions, no normalisation of the data is currently undertaken and therefore the comparison is not of ‘like’ figures. Action should be taken to address this discrepancy so that meaningful comparison and analysis of the data can be made over time and also so that the effectiveness of any emissions reduction measures can be properly assessed.
FPLP have plans to broaden their reporting by including certain Scope 3 sources in future periods. This, along with the improvements suggested, would make their reporting particularly robust.
Overall, it is our opinion that FPLP’s position in terms of emissions reporting for the sources currently included is good. They are also aware that in order to improve further, action must be taken to refine data gathering, principally to prevent over reporting of Scope 1 emissions.
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