The following changes have been made:

Service-sector tools

Fuel use in facilities: revised emission factors
Electricity purchase: revised emission factors

Cross-sector tools

Stationary combustion: revised emission factors
Electricity, heat or steam purchase: revised emission factors

Sector-specific tools

Adipic acid: updated emission factors
Aluminum: revised method for calculating the CO2 emissions from lime production
Ammonia: an entirely new method for calculating CO2 emissions based on properties of the fuels consumed in manufacture.
HCFC-22: a new method for calculating the HFC-23 emissions based on the carbon and flourine balance efficiencies of the production process
Lime: two new methods that calculate the CO2 emissions based on the properties of either the lime types produced or of the carbonates used in lime manufacture.
Nitric acid: revised emission factors

Click here to see the complete listing of tools provided by the GHG Protocol.

Neelam has an undergraduate degree in Physics from Delhi University and a Masters in International Development Studies with a specialization in Environment Studies from Ohio University.

The following revised tools will be released at the end of February and will be accessible online:

Service-sector tools
Fuel use in facilities: revised emission factors
Electricity purchase: revised emission factors

Cross-sector tools
Stationary combustion: revised emission factors
Electricity, heat or steam purchase: revised emission factors

Sector-specific tools
Adipic acid: updated emission factors
Aluminum: revised method for calculating the CO2 emissions from lime production
Ammonia: an entirely new method for calculating CO2 emissions based on properties of the fuels consumed in manufacture.
HCFC-22: a new method for calculating the HFC-23 emissions based on the carbon and flourine balance efficiencies of the production process
Lime: two new methods that calculate the CO2 emissions based on the properties of either the lime types produced or of the carbonates used in lime manufacture.
Nitric acid: revised emission factors
Pulp and paper: revised emission factors for mobile and stationary combustion, and chemical synthesis
Wood products: revised emission factors for mobile and stationary combustion

- Iron and Steel tool: Both the Excel spreadsheet and PDF guidance document have been written. The final technical review of these documents, led by industry experts, will start in mid-February.

- Natural Gas Transmission and Distribution: The draft guidance document is currently undergoing external review by a consortium of industry associations, multinational companies, and other stakeholders. The final protocol will be finalized by April.

- Financial Sector Carbon Accounting: A draft of the guidance for financial institutions on carbon accounting has passed through internal review and will be going to the banking sector stakeholder group in February. After their comments are integrated where appropriate, this document will go to a broader external review process and be published. Because this document is no longer a tool as was originally envisaged, the review process of this document will differ from how the GHG Protocol calculation tools have been reviewed previously.

- Corporate Balance Sheet Framework and Guidance Protocol: Between October and December, WRI began to develop a discussion paper outlining a corporate balance sheet framework for greenhouse gas assets and liabilities. WRI developed an outline of the discussion paper that identifies the key questions, both technical and policy-related, that must be addressed by an accounting framework for credibly tracking GHG emissions and GHG reduction instruments, such as offsets and allowances, to help companies credibly determine their net GHG impact. WRI will finalize the discussion paper by March 2008.

Brazil
Program partners Fundação Getúlio Vargas and Conselho Empresarial Brasileiro para o Desensvolvimento Sustentable (CEBDS), the Ministry of Environment, WRI, and WBCSD are finalizing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining the basis and guidelines for collaboration in the design and implementation of a GHG accounting and reporting program in Brazil. The MOU is expected to be signed at an event launching the initiation of the Brazil GHG Program in April or May.

Leading up to the launch event, the program partners will recruit a core of “founding” companies that are poised to provide leadership and guidance in the design of the Brazil GHG Program. The creation of a founding company group will be a unique feature of the Brazil GHG Program that has not yet been implemented in similar WRI-WBCSD-led initiatives in Mexico, the Philippines, and China. Program partners are still in the process of determining the exact role of these founding companies. A meeting to establish key design features of the Brazil GHG Program will follow the MOU signing and program launch.

The program is currently being supported by USAID and the UK-Global Opportunities Fund.

Philippines
Approximately half of the companies participating in the first business pilot group have submitted 2006 GHG inventories to the Philippine Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Reporting Program (PhilGARP). Six companies are in the process of road-testing a customized version of the Emissions and Allowance Tracking System (EATS) web application and the Online Calculation, Reporting and Verification Tool (CRAVE) originally developed for registries within the United States. Following the road-testing process, feedback from the companies will be incorporated into the software, which will be available for Philippine companies to use in the next phase of PhilGARP.

A recognition event in conjunction with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Philippines (DENR), also a program partner, is expected to take place when the remaining companies complete their inventories.

Mexico
In November, the Mexican government recognized 35 participating companies for completing their 2006 GHG inventories in accordance with the program’s specification and deadlines. These companies accounted for 102 million tons of CO2e, approximately 35 percent of Mexico’s industrial and stationary combustion emissions. Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada commented on the success of the Mexico GHG Program in promoting less carbon-intensive production and identifying opportunities to advance sustainable development.

The new standard will provide additional guidance on accounting for Scope 3 or Other indirect emissions.

With “carbon footprint” increasingly becoming a popular buzzword within the corporate lexicon, companies are seeking more guidance on how to develop fuller and more accurate pictures of their greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in terms of supply chain, lifecycle, and product emissions.

In recent months, many companies and stakeholders have been looking to the GHG Protocol to develop new guidelines on supply chain and lifecycle GHG accounting. In response to this demand, WRI and WBCSD designed a survey to assess the need for new guidelines and sent the survey to roughly 400 companies, experts, and other stakeholders. The nearly 100 responses sent a clear signal for the GHG Protocol to develop new guidelines in this area. As a result, WRI and WBCSD are seeking to complete the consultation process and move forward with the initiation of new guidelines on supply chain and lifecycle greenhouse gas accounting and reporting in spring 2008.

The existing GHG Protocol standards have become recognized as internationally accepted best practice in greenhouse gas reporting at the corporate and project levels. New guidelines would build on and elaborate on the existing framework to include supply chain and lifecycle accounting, which fall into the “scope 3″ or “other” indirect greenhouse gas emissions category in the existing Corporate Standard, but need further guidance and standardization. These new guidelines would represent the development of the GHG Protocol’s third major standard.

“Companies are increasingly interested in providing ‘climate friendly’ or ‘carbon neutral’ products and services to their customers, yet there are few established rules for which GHG emissions to include in a corporate or product-level ‘carbon footprint,’ and techniques for quantifying emissions associated with certain elements of the supply chain are still evolving. It’s a question of where to set the boundaries for Scope 3 reporting as much as anything else,” said Derik Broekhoff, a Senior Associate at WRI.

In developing these new guidelines, the GHG Protocol would follow the same broad, multi-stakeholder process used to develop our previous standards. The first step in the process will be to determine the scope of the guidelines, such as whether they address corporate supply chains versus a full lifecycle assessment, and whether the analysis focuses on products or organizations.
WRI and WBCSD hope the new guidelines will allow companies to make a more comprehensive assessment of their greenhouse gas emissions along their supply chain and better incorporate GHG impacts into business decision-making. New guidelines would also help consumers and businesses customers make purchasing decisions that better incorporate greenhouse gas impacts.

The GHG Protocol’s goal in undertaking this initiative is to harmonize and build upon emerging schemes to assess supply chain and lifecycle accounting undertaken by other organizations, such as the Carbon Trust, British Standards Institute, and UK Defra; the International Organization for Standardization (ISO); the Carbon Disclosure Project; and others. WRI and WBCSD are in dialogue with these and other key partners to design a comprehensive and effective process for moving forward.

In March, WRI and WBCSD will issue a press release to share detailed survey results and announce next steps.

GHG Protocol Director Pankaj Bhatia with Liu Ming from the National Development and Reform Commission, China.

Last month, Chinese cement companies took the first steps towards measuring and managing CO2 emissions across the entire cement sector.

Cement production is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions: five percent of the global total. And China’s cement sector all by itself accounts for 45 percent of global cement production.

“The Chinese cement sector covers almost half the world’s cement production, and at least half the greenhouse gas emissions from this sector. That’s why the CSI [Cement Sustainability Initiative] believes it is critical to work with our Chinese colleagues to build the relevant tools and techniques which can be used to help them manage these emissions,” said Howard Klee of the WBCSD.

Representatives from nearly 75 companies and organizations attended a first-its-kind training workshop on January 21-23, which was convened as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership in Beijing. WRI, the lead organizer of the workshop along with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, introduced the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) that builds on the ISO-recognized GHG Protocol.

The workshop coincided with the launch of the CO2 Centre of Excellence at the China Building Materials Academy (CBMA) in Beijing. The GHG Protocol will work to develop the capacity within the CBMA to provide technical assistance to China’s 5,000 cement companies to both measure and manage GHG emissions and climate impacts.

Why is this workshop significant?

For one, it represents a significant step forward by the Chinese government in its clean development and climate change strategies for the industrial sector. The Chinese government has planned a 3-phase strategy to collect data from the cement companies, starting with the multinationals and expanding to medium and small enterprises. The GHG Protocol provides a sound foundation for this strategy; it includes tools and methodologies for measuring emissions at both the corporate and facility levels.

The initiative adds to other policies that China is developing in its attempts to address its fast-growing emissions. Other policies include economy-wide efficiency targets, along with aggressive renewable energy and vehicle efficiency standards.

The next steps are to take lessons learned from the preliminary workshop and scale up to include China’s approximately 5,000 cement companies, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprise. Given limited resources and the uneven capacity of Chinese companies on GHG accounting, virtually all will need training in using the GHG Protocol if China is to effectively manage emissions from this sector.

Over 50 Chinese cement companies participated in the first training workshop for CO2 accounting.

Tim Herzog, Director of Online Communications, and LauraLee Dooley, Internet Strategist/Web strategist at WRI contributed to this article.

With the U.S. government now debating policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a national scale, this policy brief explains why policymakers should collect the necessary emissions data to ensure the success of U.S. climate change policies. The brief details the need for a mandatory facility-level greenhouse gas emissions registry and reporting program at the federal level and outlines some key design elements to include in such a registry.

This brief is especially timely. In December 2007, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008. The law includes a provision directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from appropriate sources in all sectors of the U.S. economy. U.S. EPA plans to publish draft regulations for the reporting program in late 2008. However, President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 does not include funding for EPA to implement the registry. Our policy brief explains why implementing this GHG registry and reporting program is a critical step for ensuring the success of US climate change policies, such as a cap-and-trade program now being debated in Congress.

Click here to download the policy brief.

Members of the Confederation of Indian Industry, U.S. EPA Climate Leaders, and WRI met in Boulder, Co. on Dec. 5 to discuss the design of a new GHG program for India.

To replicate this successful model in India, WRI, U.S. EPA and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Green Business Center (GBC) are partnering together to replicate the Climate Leaders program there. Following the Annual Meeting of the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program in Boulder, Colorado on Dec. 5, 2007, WRI organized the first program design meeting of the program partners at WRI’s offices in Washington, D.C. on December 9-11, 2007.

Following the program design framework provided by the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and the GHG Protocol’s new publication, Measuring to Manage: A Guide to Designing GHG Accounting and Reporting Programs, and building on the EPA’s Climate Leaders’s program experience, the program partners identified and discussed key design, implementation, and communication questions and considerations.

WRI is working on synthesizing meeting discussions to draft a set of recommendations on program design addressing important questions, such as sectors and sources, geographical, operational, and organizational boundaries, and setting base year. CII-GBC is planning to launch the program during their annual Green Business Summit in New Delhi sometime in May.

WRI hosted a side event on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation at COP-13 in Bali, Indonesia.

The GHG Protocol announced three new developments to promote the scale-up of GHG accounting and reporting at a COP-13 side event on December 7 in Bali, Indonesia.

The side event launched the GHG Protocol’s newest publication, Measuring to Manage: A Guide to Designing GHG Accounting and Reporting Programs. Measuring to Manage draws on lessons learned from programs such as the Mexico GHG Program, the Philippine GHG Accounting and Reporting Program, The Climate Registry, and Climate Leaders to guide users through the process of designing and implementing programs to promote GHG accounting and reporting.

Additionally, the side event announced a new collaboration between ISO, WBCSD, and WRI to jointly promote the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 as two internationally accepted and complementary standards for GHG accounting and reporting.

In a press release that announced the partnership, Håkan Murby, ISO president, said, “We are positive that closer collaboration between our three international organizations will increase corporate confidence in instituting and maintaining climate change programs.”

Through this partnership, the three organizations will be better poised to address technical issues, concurrently promote the standards, and raise awareness through education, training, and capacity building.

Finally, WRI announced its partnership with the GHG Management Institute to provide professional training on GHG Protocol standards via an e-learning platform.

“Taken together, these developments will greatly facilitate the mainstreaming of corporate GHG management,” said Taryn Fransen, Senior Associate at WRI. “Any group that wants to set up a GHG reporting platform will be able to learn from international best practices, access online training to build their own expertise, and feel comfortable that their program can meet both GHG Protocol and ISO standards.”

A panel of experts including Bjorn Stigson of WBCSD, Dr. Fernando Tudela of SEMARNAT, Kevin McKinley of ISO, Russel Mills of Dow Chemical, and Jonathan Pershing and Taryn Fransen of WRI discussed the new developments. The event was attended by government, industry, and NGO delegates from around the world.