After successful completion of the course, students are able to:

• to understand why companies have to include information about their GHG emissions in their management control systems
• to distinguish the most relevant regulations with regard to GHG emissions management and reporting
• to interpret GHG related disclosures within annual reports of corporations
• to establish systems for GHG emissions measurement
• to incorporate information on GHG emissions in the PDCA cycle
• apply the 3-Levers-of-Emisssion-Control (3-LoEC) model via R-Tidyverse

This semester's topic: Sustainability management and reporting - Current challenges and implementation

The course consists of three integrated parts

Part A) Legal requirements for GHG measurement and reporting

• Sustainable finance: regulatory framework and the demand for data on GHG emissions
• European and global corporate sustainability reporting: overview
• Carbon accounting: requirements of ESRS 1, IFRS S2 and GHG Protocol
• GHG Emission-Management Control Systems (GHG Emission-MCS): Overview

Part B) GHG Emission-Management Control Systems: Details

• Simons' 4-Levers-Of-Control (4-LOC) Management Control Systems 
• Kaplan's Activity Based Costing (ABC) & Budgeting (ABB)
• 3-Levers-Of-Emission Control (3-LoEC) Model for measuring GHG emissions via controllable parameters
• Carbon Foot Print (CFP) at the product level and at the corporate level
• Planning and reducing GHG emissions with the GHG Emission-MCS

Part C) GHG Emission-Management Control Systems: Implementation

• Identifying relevant information for measuring GHG emissions
• Connecting the GHG emission measurement with ABC costing information
• Calculating the unit Carbon Foot Print (uCFP) by aggregating primary and secondary emissions for Scope 1 and 2 and adding Emission-Liabilities related to Scope 3 w.r.t. consumed materials and applied equipment
• Starting with uCFP-calculations in MS Excel
• Calculating uCFP in the Tidyverse library of the R statistics programming language

Imagine, you are hired by a large Austrian company as an assistant of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). One of your projects addresses the new legal responsibilities that European companies face with regard to sustainability reporting: You shall help with implementing them – but not only in your company’s external reporting but in its management control system (MCS) as well in order to include sustainability throughout the entire PDCA cycle. “Doing well by doing good” – that is the overall ambition of your new project.

In this course you acquire the needed knowledge, skills and competences for performing these tasks. We will discuss key legal requirements and concepts; also, we will apply them to real-life cases.

The course is offered as a VU (lecture with exercise). In addition to the acquisition of knowledge, the focus is also on the processing of numerous exercises in order to consolidate the knowledge and to highlight practical application issues.

The course is based on the concept of "Flipped Classroom". This means that students have to prepare predefined content before each unit. These contents are discussed and deepened during the classroom sessions. This is followed by a follow-up phase (supplementary literature, exercise examples, etc.).

In total, a maximum of 100 points can be obtained. The course comprises the following assessments:

• Project work:
  • Part I: 30 points
  • Part II: 30 points
  • Quizzes: 20 points
  • Final exam: 20 points

Based on the total points that are obtained, the following grading scheme applies:

• Very good: >= 87,5 points
• Good: >= 75 points
• Satisfactory: >= 62,5 points
• Sufficient: >= 50 points
• Not sufficient: < 50 points

You can find the literature in TUWEL

Adviseable is knowledge gained from

• "Controlling" lecture or
• "IT-Based Management" lecture