Key criteria for measuring impact
The impacts were classified using the value creation model of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), which subdivides impacts into six types of capital: financial, manufactured, intellectual, natural, social & human capital. For each of these capitals, we quantify one or multiple indicators. In the coming period we will continue to develop processes for quantifying the other capitals.
The relevant impacts that we have identified are reported as fully as possible.
Impacts are quantified in terms of money (euros) by estimating the sum of the individual impacts on prosperity and well-being. Prosperity is broadly defined to include all the most relevant impacts on prosperity that we have identified. ‘Well-being concerns the quality of life in the present and the extent to which it does not impact negatively on future generations and/or people elsewhere in the world’ (Statistics Netherlands ‘Monitor of Well-being’).
The methods used to calculate the impacts are based on techniques that are commonly applied in scientific and social practice, including the Natural Capital Protocol of the NCC (2016), the Environmental management - Life cycle assessment - Principles and framework ISO (2010) and the General Guidance for Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). As indicated, further details are available online.
Since Alliander operates in a regulated market and forms part of a broader value chain, impacts are attributed to Alliander based on the attribution method described below.
The prosperity effects are conservatively estimated where a choice must be made between various equally reasonable assumptions. Two assumptions are equally reasonable if they are equally acceptable on the basis of the applied criteria and scientific practice and are equally plausible in the eyes of experts. This means that if several equally reasonable assumptions are possible, the assumption resulting in the lowest estimated prosperity impact is chosen.