When businesses dip a toe in the rising sea of corporate action on climate change, the first box they check before diving in involves tabulating their own greenhouse-gas inventory. In getting your corporate house in order, the first step is defining where your yard ends and your neighbor’s begins.
The good news: There is a clearly accepted international standard providing guidance to companies sorting “what’s in” and “what’s out” for their GHG inventory. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard is the playbook everyone is working from.
The bad news: Some issues are more clearly defined in the guidance than others, leaving individual companies to sort out their own best way forward.
Emissions from employee commutes are one such gray area. In these early days, how leading companies come down on this issue is critically important in setting a precedent. The GHG Protocol does provide general guidance on this issue, but more specific direction is needed.
Transport Emissions
In the United States, over 20 percent of GHG emissions are from road transport. While plug-in hybrids ... Read more