🧾 Carbon Ledger
Count a company's carbon the way auditors do, then cut the most tonnes for the least money.
The goal
Build an accurate greenhouse-gas inventory for a different UAE company each round, then spend a small budget on the cheapest real reductions and make an honest public claim. Your team is a carbon accounting team. Each round you get six lines of activity data with emission factors: a hotel, a logistics firm, a dairy and a software company.
How a round works
The four rounds
- 1
🏨 Marina Grand Hotel, Dubai
Generators, grid power, a refrigerant leak, food purchases, landfill waste and some offsets.
What it teaches: Purchased goods and electricity dwarf the fuel the hotel burns; refrigerant leaks matter because of their warming power.
- 2
🚛 Jebel Ali Freight
Own trucks, warehouses, subcontracted hauliers, flights, forklifts and rooftop solar.
What it teaches: Who owns the truck decides the scope. Certificates cut market-based Scope 2 cheaply.
- 3
🐄 Al Ain Dairy Co.
Boilers, grid power, purchased feed, the company's own cows, vans and commuting.
What it teaches: Food companies are dominated by farming: feed (Scope 3) and their own animals (Scope 1).
- 4
💻 Saadiyat Tech
Office power, cloud, devices, flights, a generator and the electricity customers use to run the software.
What it teaches: In tech almost everything is Scope 3.
Your decisions
| Scope of each line | Every round | Choose Scope 1 (owned or controlled sources), Scope 2 (purchased electricity, heat or cooling), Scope 3 (the rest of the value chain) or Not in the inventory (offsets, self-generated renewable power). Ask “who owns the thing that burns or leaks?” |
|---|---|---|
| Total emissions | Every round | Your estimate of the inventory in tonnes CO₂e: the sum of activity × factor ÷ 1000 for lines inside the inventory. Within 10% scores well; within 50% scores nothing. |
| Reduction budget | Every round | Split the budget across projects. Each has a cost per tonne and a maximum. Offsets cost AED 30 per tonne but do not reduce the inventory. Fill the cheapest project to its maximum, then the next. |
| Public claim | Every round | Reductions only, reductions plus separately reported offsets, or “carbon neutral”. “Carbon neutral” without enough credible offsets is greenwashing: −15 trust. |
Worked example. A hotel burns 40,000 litres of diesel at 2.68 kg per litre: 40,000 × 2.68 ÷ 1000 = 107 tonnes, Scope 1. It buys 9 million kWh at 0.40: 3,600 tonnes, Scope 2.
How you are scored
Round score = 40% scopes correct + 30% inventory accuracy + 30% tonnes cut versus the best possible with the budget.
Event cards
- External assurance. Wrong scopes count double this round.
- Cleaner grid factor. Purchased electricity uses 0.35 instead of 0.40 kg per kWh.
- Budget cut. Reduction budgets fall 25%.
- Offset scandal. “Carbon neutral” claims built on offsets lose extra trust.
Students: join in 30 seconds
- Scan the QR code on the big screen, or open playbook.inlabsgroup.com/carbon-ledger and type the code.
- Type your first name. No app, no account.
- Join a team or create one. You get a role with a job on every round.
- Each round: read the briefing and data, fill in your decisions, predict your score, submit.
Key words
- CO₂e
- Carbon dioxide equivalent: all greenhouse gases converted into the warming of CO₂.
- Emission factor
- Kilograms of CO₂e per unit of activity, such as per litre of diesel or per kWh.
- Scope 1
- Direct emissions from sources the company owns or controls.
- Scope 2
- Emissions from electricity, heat or cooling the company buys.
- Scope 3
- All other emissions in the value chain, in 15 categories.
- Marginal abatement cost
- The cost of cutting one more tonne with a given project.
For facilitators 4 rounds · about 50 minutes
Facilitator access
- On the projector laptop open playbook.inlabsgroup.com/carbon-ledger/?host.
- Sign in with your facilitator PIN or demo code.
- In Setup choose Team, Individual or Hybrid, the number of teams (up to 20), rounds and minutes.
- Press Q for the big join QR code; students appear in People.
- Press Start. Reveal each round, discuss the answer key on the projector, then draw an event card.
Joining with the QR code
- As a team
- One inventory per team; the analyst calculates, the assurance role checks scopes.
- Alone
- Everyone builds their own inventory: good for practice before an exam.
- Hybrid
- Everyone answers on their phone; the team score is the average.
Setup tips
- Do the hotel example together before Round 1.
- Keep the assurance card for Round 2 or 3.
- Show the answer key and the scope chart after each round.
Watch for
- Teams that put subcontracted trucks in Scope 1.
- Teams that subtract offsets.
- Teams that spend on solar first because it is the biggest.
Console controls
Start, Reveal, pause or set the timer, step back, draw or write event cards, message every screen, freeze the projector, spotlight a team, hide names, add bots, move players, award or fine, change score weights, start a new game or end it early, show all teams, and download the CSV of every decision and result. Keys: P projector, Q join QR.
Debrief questions
- Which line surprised you most when you saw its tonnes, and why?
- Where did “who owns it” change the scope?
- When is buying offsets acceptable, and when is it greenwashing?
Probing questions
- Why does the GHG Protocol split emissions into scopes?
- Why is Scope 3 so large for most companies?
- When is buying offsets the right thing to do?