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.

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. 

O programa GHG Protocol do World Resources Institute – WRI pretende contribuir com o esforço coletivo mundial em busca de uma economia resiliente e do equilíbrio climático do planeta. Para isso, desenvolve ferramentas de apoio à contabilização e reporte de emissões de GEE, como o GHG Protocol para empresas, reconhecido e adotado mundialmente. 

Close on the heels of a new GHG program in Brazil, the Indian industry launched a national-level GHG Inventorization Program in Delhi, India, on May 28, 2008. Under the program, corporations will measure and manage their GHG emissions based on internationally recognized standards and monitor their progress towards voluntary reduction goals. The India GHG Inventory Program is a partnership between the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the US EPA, and the World Resources Institute.

The month of October saw the CD-release of the final version of the India program guide by the Indian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, Mr Shyam Saran. In his remarks, Mr Saran emphasized the importance of businesses taking the initiative to deal with climate change and encouraged public-private partnerships. The guide provides guidance and examples to assist companies in accounting for, quantification and tracking of their greenhouse gas emissions using internationally accepted Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard.

Agriculture and agriculture-linked land use change contribute almost 80% to Brazil’s national emissions. On September 25 in Sao Paulo, GHG Protocol held an inaugural workshop to engage key stakeholders in developing a set of new tools specific to Brazilian agriculture – a corporate GHG accounting standard and emission factors. The event featured a keynote address by Eduardo Assad, a director at Embrapa and formerly the Brazilian secretary for climate change.

The China Business Council for Sustainable Development, in conjunction with WBCSD and WRI, hosted an informational workshop, “Corporate Energy Conservation and GHG Management,” on June 1 in Beijing at the Kempinski Hotel. Approximately 100 representatives from CBCSD’s member companies, government agencies, and NGOs attended the workshop.

On May 23, in São Paulo, WRI, ICLEI, C40, USP-IEE, and EMBARQ Brazil jointly brought together more than 200 Brazilian city officials and experts to discuss how to use the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GPC) to measure and manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cities. 

Accounting for 89 percent of end-use electricity consumption, buildings are the focus of a new ‘Carbon Audit’ campaign aimed to tackle climate change in Hong Kong. On July 24, Hong Kong’s ‘Guidelines to Account for and Report on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals for buildings (Commercial, Residential or Institutional Purpose) in Hong Kong’ based on the WRI-WBCSD GHG Protocol was launched in a ceremony attended by 37 major organizations, including all of Hong Kong’s major property developers, as well as media.

Today the GHG Protocol launches two new global greenhouse gas accounting standards - for corporate value chains (scope 3) and product life cycle emissions. Janet Ranganathan, WRI’s Vice-president for Science & Research, and Pankaj Bhatia, WRI’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol Director since 2004, describe the 12-year program’s critical role in business and government efforts to address climate impacts.

GHG Protocol has published a draft royalty-free Licensing Policy and plans to integrate this agreement into all online calculation tools and standards in the New Year. GHG Protocol website visitors will be asked to sign-in before downloading all online tools and standards and will then be asked to accept or decline the license presented before them. Users will not be asked to accept the license every time they download tools and standards; a one-time review of the license is all that is required.

WRI’s GHG Protocol Team is teaching “the new carbon math” – carbon accounting for GHG measurement and management – by developing e-learning curriculum based on GHG Protocol standards and tools. Under the GHG Management Institute, WRI will develop a series of online courses in partnership with Earth Council Geneva (ECG), the GHG Experts Network (GEN), and ClimateCheck. The institute aims to provide professional training on how to measure and manage GHG emissions. “The Institute’s philosophy is ‘if you cannot accurately measure GHG emissions, you cannot manage them’,” Michael Gillenwater, the Dean of the Institute and the Director of the GHG Experts Network, said in a press release.