By Laura Draucker - November 05, 2013

Low-carbon development has become the core theme of China’s urbanization. In fact, it’s one of the country’s key strategies to achieve its target of reducing carbon intensity by 40-45 percent by 2020.

More than half the world’s people live in cities, and cities are responsible for more than 70 percent of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions on Earth. These dramatic statistics mean cities have a critical role to play in addressing climate change.

As home to 3.5 billion of the world’s population, cities and urban areas play a crucial role in combating global climate change. And today, many of their leaders are announcing steps to do just that.

The Mexican government has adopted a new national climate change strategy that identifies the GHG Protocol-based Mexico GHG Program as the basis of a step-by-step approach to climate change mitigation.

On October 4th the GHG Protocol launched the new Product Life Cycle and Corporate Value Chain Standards with events in New York City and London. The global press launch of the Standards in New York City occurred in conjunction with WRI’s Corporate Consultative Group (CCG) fall meeting. CCG is a group of 150-200 representatives of large corporations, mainly sustainability managers, who are coming to engage with WRI experts – and with each other – to access environmental intelligence in order to protect and grow shareholder value and steer business to better protect the environment.

On the evening of April 14th, WRI filled a role not normally reserved for environmental think tanks: VIP guest at a high-profile New York restaurant opening. Otarian, now open in New York City’s West Village, is a new boutique fast-casual restaurant chain based on the principles of sustainability and vegetarianism. Otarian is also the first global restaurant chain to track the carbon footprint of all of its menu items.

A new journal, Greenhouse Gas Measurement & Management, focuses on the infrastructure to support future GHG mitigation policies by providing a scholarly forum for both academic researchers and GHG professionals.

The Mexico GHG Program officially transitioned from a pilot project to a permanent program on October 2, marking a significant milestone for the program partners and 30 par

Hurricane Sandy was a massive and deadly storm, extending more than 1,000 miles, bringing huge waves and more than 13 feet of water to parts of New York City. In Manhattan, floods swept away cars and overflowed subway stations.

Project developers are concerned that high transaction costs and uncertainty around the acceptance of projects by governing bodies is limiting the number of projects being developed in Africa and around the world.

ICT companies and their customers will soon have common approaches and methodologies to calculate the carbon footprints of ICT products and services thanks to industry guidance due to be published at the end of the year.

As corporate leaders track and set more ambitious targets for reducing GHG emissions—and take a broader look at Scope 3 emissions—many are looking for a way to find new opportunities to collaborate (internally and externally). Starting this month, WRI is inviting companies to road test a new collaboration tool developed as part of the Next Practice Collaborative.

The Philippines Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Reporting Program (PhilGARP) was officially launched at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manila on November 30, 2006.

EPA is creating a nationwide database of greenhouse gas emissions, an important first step on the path to reducing U.S. emissions. The plan would require 13,000 facilities to report their emissions. 

By Stephen Russell

Since its creation in 2002, the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program has assisted more than 150 companies to develop and implement long-term climate change strategies. This includes developing a GHG inventory, an inventory management plan, and a GHG reduction target. To replicate the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program's 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.

Last week’s Rio+20 conference failed to yield strong sustainability commitments from corporations. The gap between where we need to get to avoid climate change’s worst effects and the actions companies are willing to take to get us there have never been further apart.

New developments are driving the need for GHG accounting programs around the world to evolve more efficiently, more effectively, and at a greater scale. On the business side, there is a trend toward managing GHG emissions along the value chain. Companies are looking up and down the supply chain and throughout the product life-cycle for GHG management opportunities. As climate policy becomes a reality in industrialized and developing countries around the world, many emerging economies are adopting voluntary national GHG mitigation targets and identifying the policies and measures to best achieve them. These trends point to the need for greatly enhanced GHG accounting capacity and tools at a global scale to ensure that mitigation actions can be measurable, reportable and verifiable.