SUST 5023 Module 2 Operational Environmental Performance Assessment Example

11,548 Tonnes Down From 12,352: Measuring a Michigan Seating Plant's Operational Emissions

Student Name

American College of Education

SUST5023: Eco-Business: Strategy, Governance, and Sustainable Operations

Module 2 Assignment

Instructor Name

September 11, 2028

Introduction

The first paper examined how Interface builds sustainability into its strategy, with absolute emissions targets from a base year. This paper applies the same discipline to a smaller manufacturer. Lakeshore Seating, a composite company drawn from my experience with details changed, makes office chairs at one plant and an attached warehouse in Holland, Michigan, with 410 employees. Its leaders want to know how the plant's environmental performance has changed since 2022, the year they plan to use as a baseline. This paper sets the boundaries, calculates Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for 2022 and 2025 with published factors, adds waste and identifies the operational levers behind the results.

The Accounting Standard

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol's corporate standard divides emissions into three scopes. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources a company owns or controls, such as boilers and ovens. Scope 2 covers emissions from generating the electricity, steam or heat it buys. Scope 3 covers other indirect emissions across the value chain (World Resources Institute & World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004). The standard also asks companies to set organizational and operational boundaries, choose a base year and recalculate it if the company's structure changes significantly. Lakeshore uses operational control as its boundary, so the plant and warehouse it runs are fully included.

Emission Factors

All factors come from the EPA's 2025 emission factors hub. Natural gas burned in stationary equipment emits 53.06 kilograms of carbon dioxide, 1 gram of methane and 0.1 gram of nitrous oxide per million British thermal units. Propane emits 5.72 kilograms of carbon dioxide, 0.27 gram of methane and 0.05 gram of nitrous oxide per gallon. Electricity on the RFC Michigan grid subregion, based on eGRID2023 data, emits 962.084 pounds of carbon dioxide, 0.082 pound of methane and 0.011 pound of nitrous oxide per megawatt-hour. Methane and nitrous oxide are converted to carbon dioxide equivalent using 100-year global warming potentials of 28 and 265 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2025).

Activity Data

Activity data come from utility and supplier invoices. In 2022 the plant used 104,500 million British thermal units of natural gas for its boilers, powder coating cure ovens and space heating, 46,000 gallons of propane for warehouse space heaters and 14,900 megawatt-hours of electricity. In 2025 it used 96,000 million British thermal units of natural gas, 38,000 gallons of propane and 14,200 megawatt-hours of electricity. Production rose from 540,000 chairs in 2022 to 610,000 in 2025. Invoices cover every month in both years, and meter readings were checked against them for a sample of months.

Scope 1 Results

Natural gas produced 5,544.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, plus 2.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from methane and 2.8 from nitrous oxide, for 5,550.5 tonnes. In 2025 it produced 5,099.0 tonnes in total. Propane added 264.1 tonnes in 2022 and 218.2 in 2025. Scope 1 emissions therefore fell from 5,814.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to 5,317.1, a drop of 8.6 percent. Methane and nitrous oxide add only about 0.1 percent to combustion emissions, but the standard requires them, and including them shows the calculation is complete.

Scope 2 Results

Electricity produced 6,537.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022 and 6,230.4 in 2025 under the location-based method. To isolate the plant's own change, both years use the same grid factor; applying older eGRID factors to 2022 would mix the plant's performance with changes in the regional grid. The Scope 2 guidance also calls for a market-based figure reflecting any renewable energy purchases or supplier-specific rates. Lakeshore holds no renewable energy certificates and has asked its utility for a supplier-specific rate, so this paper reports the location-based result and notes the market-based figure as pending.

Totals and Intensity

Combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions fell from 12,352.0 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022 to 11,547.5 in 2025, a 6.5 percent absolute reduction. Because production grew 13 percent over the same period, emissions per chair fell further, from 22.9 kilograms to 18.9 kilograms, a 17.2 percent improvement. The two figures tell different stories. Intensity shows the plant becoming more efficient; the absolute figure shows what the atmosphere receives. Science-based targets, like Interface's, are set in absolute terms, so Lakeshore should treat the 6.5 percent as its headline and the intensity gain as an explanation.

Waste

Waste sent to landfill fell from 2,300 short tons of mixed solid waste in 2022 to 1,850 in 2025 after the plant began separating foam offcuts and packaging. Using EPA's factor of 0.58 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per short ton of landfilled mixed waste, landfill emissions fell from about 1,334 to 1,073 tonnes. The plant recycled 620 short tons of corrugated packaging in 2025, with a factor of 0.11 tonnes per short ton, about 68 tonnes (EPA, 2025). Waste emissions are Scope 3 and are reported separately, but they are large enough, about 9 percent of Scope 1 and 2, to deserve management attention.

Where the Emissions Come From

Electricity is the largest source, at 54 percent of combined Scope 1 and 2 in 2025, followed by natural gas at 44 percent and propane at 2 percent. Within natural gas, plant engineers estimate that the powder coating cure ovens use about half, the boilers about a third and space heating the rest. Within electricity, compressed air, injection molding for chair bases and lighting dominate. These shares point to the levers that matter: the cure ovens, compressed air leaks and the source of electricity, rather than smaller items such as office equipment.

Data Quality

Busch et al. (2022) found that corporate carbon data reported by data providers often disagree, partly because companies define boundaries and methods inconsistently, which limits comparisons across firms. Lakeshore's figures avoid some of these problems by documenting boundaries, factors and invoices, but they have limits. Refrigerant leaks from air conditioning and chillers are excluded because service records are incomplete; they may add a small amount to Scope 1. Production counts mix chair models of different sizes, which affects intensity. And the market-based Scope 2 figure is not yet available.

What Drove the Change

Three changes explain most of the improvement. Replacing the oldest cure oven burner in 2023 cut gas use per chair coated. A compressed air leak survey in 2024 found and fixed leaks that the maintenance team estimated wasted about a tenth of compressor output. And moving the warehouse to high-efficiency radiant heaters reduced propane use. Growth in production offset part of these gains. Future reductions of the size science-based targets require will need larger steps, such as electrifying the cure ovens or contracting for renewable electricity, which later papers on supply chains and governance will consider.

Conclusion

Measured under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol with EPA's 2025 factors, Lakeshore Seating's combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions fell 6.5 percent from 2022 to 2025, to 11,547.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, while emissions per chair fell 17.2 percent. Landfill waste emissions fell as well. Electricity and the cure ovens are the largest sources and the main levers. Clear boundaries, published factors and documented activity data make the figures checkable, and the stated exclusions show where data must improve. The next paper turns from the plant to its supply chain.

References

Busch, T., Johnson, M., & Pioch, T. (2022). Corporate carbon performance data: Quo vadis? Journal of Industrial Ecology, 26(1), 350-363. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13008

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025). GHG emission factors hub. https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/ghg-emission-factors-hub

World Resources Institute & World Business Council for Sustainable Development. (2004). The greenhouse gas protocol: A corporate accounting and reporting standard (Rev. ed.). https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard