JOIN THE CLUB –
SUCCESSFUL REPORTING INITIATIVES

Tell everyone who may be interested about the groups that exist specifically to help businesses reduce their emissions. There is the Global Reporting Initiative, which has pioneered the development of the world’s most widely-used sustainability reporting framework. This sets out the principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performance. The cornerstone of the framework is the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The third version – known as the G3 Guidelines – was published in 2006, and is available free. Other components of the framework include sector supplements (unique indicators for different industry sectors) and protocols (detailed reporting guidance), and national annexes (unique country-level information). GRI promotes and develops this standardized approach to reporting to stimulate demand for sustainability information, which will benefit both reporting organizations and those who use information from their reports. GRI develops learning materials and accredits training partners, and also provides special guidance for SMEs. More than 1 500 companies worldwide, many of them household names, have announced that they have voluntarily adopted the Guidelines. The GRI is a collaborating centre of the UN Environment Programme.

Then there is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which works with shareholders and companies to disclose the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007 it published the world’s largest repository of GHG emissions and energy use data, covering 2 400 of the world’s largest corporations, which account together for 26 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions. The CDP represents institutional investors, with a combined US$57 million million under management. Individual governments have been reluctant to develop stringent national emissions limits for fear that big companies will move their factories to nations with laxer regulations. The CDP tries to get round these national interests by focusing on individual companies, not on countries. It unites institutional investors to focus attention on carbon emissions, energy usage and reduction wherever companies and assets are located. Some companies have higher GHG emissions than individual nations. A number have moved to become carbon-neutral, but others can still reduce energy use and emissions by adopting energy efficiency policies and business planning. The CDP has also begun establishing a globally-used standard for emissions and energy reporting. Much of the data it has obtained has never been collected before. An estimated US$27 thousand million will be spent over the next 30 years on energy-related capital developments (new power stations, fuel distillation plants, etc.), so it is vital that the right technologies are adopted.