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Cities have become widely recognized as major contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fifty-one percent of the world’s population, approximately 3.5 billion people, reside in urban areas. The 2008 World Energy Outlook estimated that cities accounted for over 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumptions. To address growing urban GHG emissions it is necessary to understand each city’s emission patterns and identify the major sources of emissions as well as reduction opportunities from both direct and indirect sources.

The use of standards to account for corporate greenhouse gases is increasingly common in developed countries – but it is emerging in developing countries as well. In India, companies’ focus on value chain inventories and life cycle thinking is in nascent stages.

Following the launch of the Product Life Cycle and Corporate Value Chain Accounting and Reporting Standards in New York City, London, Beijing, and Tokyo, the GHG Protocol will be launching the standards in India on March 15, 2012. The event will be hosted by the World Resources Institute (WRI), World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). The launch event will take place in the morning and be followed by training workshops on the new standards in the afternoon.

The GHG Protocol has historically provided Excel-based calculation tools on our website for any organization to download and use free of charge. These tools use widely-accepted emission factors for both cross-sector and sector-specific emission sources in corporate GHG inventories. Since the initial development of these tools, the GHG calculation field has experienced exponential growth: software programs and applications for companies have proliferated, and more databases and information sources have become available for a variety of calculation needs in more geographic areas.