What assessment has the Welsh Government made on the need to implement a standardised national approach to carbon audits?
There are certain common principles in carbon auditing across the economy. However, there are likely to be nuances between emissions sectors to reflect their different circumstances, such as the level of certainty in the greenhouse gas inventory.
In the agricultural sector for example various tools are currently used to help farmers understand their carbon footprint and make informed decisions. The
Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board are developing a new tool which has the potential to be a standardised tool, and Welsh Government is also engaged with the work the Sustainable Food Trust are undertaking to develop a Global Farm Metric.
In the public sector, we have published guidance and a toolkit to enable all reporting to be standardised in the four priority areas of Transport, Buildings, Land and procurement on an annual basis enabling aggregation of data to be easily carried out for an all Wales picture. The baseline data will be taken at 2019-20 to be able to clearly show progress going forward.