Evaluating the carbon impacts of VSEs and SMEs: a simplified multi-sector tool through France and Italy

The transition of companies is necessary to ensure a significant reduction in greenhouse gases emissions in all sectors. Today, very small, small and medium-sized enterprises are often not considered to be a priority by regulations. They often lack the specific tools and supports they need to engage a decarbonisation process and corresponding to the time and economic effort they can afford and dedicate to their greenhouse gases emissions assessment. The Mission Carb Zero project, funded by the European Union regional cooperation program ALCOTRA (Alpes Latines COopération TRAnsfrontalière), has set itself the goal of facilitating this process for these companies, with a focus on four emblematic industrial sectors of the ALCOTRA region at the boarder of France and Italy: perfumes and fine chemicals, mechatronics, agriculture, and mountain related activities. This article proposes a simplification methodology for very small, small and medium-sized enterprises developed to enable the estimation of their carbon emissions. To do so, we did a detailed analysis of the literature, including carbon footprint report of several companies from each of the four industrial sector. We deduced which emission profile could be expected per type of activity and estimated with experts the collection effort for the data required for the carbon emission assessment. This analysis helped to prioritize the definition of default data. These have been included in a carbon assessment tool to help companies measuring and reducing their carbon impact and getting involved in the global decarbonisation effort. The Mission Carb Zero project will offer a full-scale test case for over 80 very small, small and medium-sized enterprises.