October 10, 2011 - The Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
Protocol has launched two new standards that will help businesses
better understand and manage the climate impacts beyond their own
operations and improve efficiency across the value chain.
A global collaboration led by the World Business Council on
Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute
(WRI), the GHG Protocol standard is one of the most widely used
accounting tools to measure, manage and report on GHG emissions and
is used by a large number of CDP reporting organisations.
These new Corporate Value Chain and Product Life Cycle standards
announced by the GHG Protocol will enable companies to report on
their Scope 3 emissions in a standardised format and benchmark
their progress.
CDP has been involved in the steering committee
and the working group for the development of these new standards,
which it recommends companies review as they measure and collect
data from across their value chains.
This year, 72% of the Global 500 companies disclosing to CDP
included information on Scope 3 emissions, a rise in numbers
reporting on this issue. However companies are not yet reporting at
the level and quality required, partly due to the absence of a
reporting standard for the supply chain.
Emissions reduction, cost savings and long-term business risk
management are benefits to be gained by applying the same
discipline of climate change reporting to the supply chain.
Paul Simpson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project, said:
"Energy costs represent a significant component of operational
spend and we are seeing the management of carbon increasingly move
into companies' core business strategies, in order to reduce this
overhead."
"As rising energy demands compete for finite resources, the
businesses that make the decisions today that perpetuate a
low-carbon, high growth economy will be best placed to forge ahead
of their slow moving peers," he added.
The new standards today will have a positive impact on
companies' ability to increase the quality of reporting and
subsequently benefit from more resilient supply chains.
More information is available here