By Celsias Team
Posted on Aug. 30, 2010. Listed in:
Road testing for new global standards designed to measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of products and supply chains is well underway with over 60 companies having completed the tests. The testing comes as part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, which works with businesses, governments, and environmental groups around the world to build a new generation of credible and effective programs for tackling climate change.
Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the two new GHG Protocol standards — the Product Lifecycle Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard — provide methods to account for emissions associated with individual products across their life-cycles and of corporations across their value chains.
Road testing began in January this year, with 62 companies from multiple sectors and 17 countries taking part. In June, they submitted written feedback on their usability along with final GHG inventory reports. A summary of the feedback is posted on the GHG Protocol website.
“The road testing experience illustrates how developing rules around measurement, reporting, and verification involves complex technical and policy decisions that need real-world feedback to ensure the right balance is achieved between rigor and ease of use while keeping in view the capacity of both experienced and new users,” says Jennifer Morgan, director of WRI’s Climate and Energy Program. “The GHG Protocol approach to develop international standards provides us a model on how we might want to pursue the development of rules on tracking emissions at the country-level as well.”
The next steps will be to revise the standards based on feedback from the Road Testers as well as the Steering Committee and Technical Working Groups. The revised standards will be released at the end of September for a 30 day public comment period. The text will be finalised at the end of 2010 and the final versions will be published by March next year.
Image: Flickr - PhillipC
