As you probably already know, the wellbeing of our environment and reducing the carbon footprint of our operations are extremely important to Messeforum. The exhibition stands we plan and build have been carbon neutral ever since autumn 2020. Now we’ve also calculated the carbon footprint of all our other operations.
In doing so, we have the help of our partner OpenCO2net Oy. We have been calculating the emissions of our carbon neutral exhibition stands based on their comprehensive emissions database right from day one. To calculate Messeforum’s emissions at company level, we have looked at all Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. As a whole, the greenhouse gas emissions arising from our operations in 2022 amounted to 267 tonnes CO2e.
This figure includes emissions caused when producing our stands and by associated travel when constructing them on site, as well as emissions from our other day-to-day operations and office-based work. Energy consumption includes both our exhibition stands and our office work.
Due to the nature of our operations, the materials we need to make our stands and the travel and material transport needed to build them on site are naturally major sources of emissions. The emissions accumulated from our other operations mainly come from purchased products and services.
Our emissions calculation is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate standard and Scope 3. These are the most commonly used standards worldwide for calculating greenhouse gas emissions and define the principles, criteria and guidelines used as the basis for reliably calculating and reporting greenhouse gas emissions.
Our aim is a real impact on emissions
Both in stand construction and the rest of our operations, our aim is to be better all the time, constantly reducing our emissions. For example, we work with our partners to find even better stand construction materials and we encourage our partners to minimise their emissions too. We optimise our transport and always use electricity from renewable energy sources where this is available. In other purchasing, we go for low-emission alternatives wherever possible.
The unavoidable emissions which we cannot do anything about on our own are offset reliably with additionality by purchasing allowances from the EU Emissions Trading System. Here our partner is the Finnish company CO2esto, which also eliminates the emissions allowances we purchase so that they are no longer available to be traded.
This means that the emission allowances in Europe are being reduced in real terms, with major European industrial companies that cause emissions and use emissions allowances having to then reduce their own emissions correspondingly, for example, by developing and adopting new low-emission technologies. As a small expert business, we at Messeforum do not have the resources to develop new technologies ourselves. Instead we use offsetting to ensure that big companies that do have the facility to develop innovative technologies that reduce emissions, actually do so in order to be able to continue their operations.