What can a single company do? or, "A whole lotta carbon"

I've been spending much of the past few days reviewing the CDP6 responses that include Scope 3 "indirect" emissions. As a brief backgrounder, the Scope 1, 2, and 3 terminology was adopted by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Corporate Standard, and revised as "direct" and "indirect" emissions in the ISO 14064 documents. The emissions caused by facilities owned and operated by a company are classified as Scope 1, purchased electricity and steam as Scope 2, and emissions related to a company's activities but not taking place at owned or operated facilities are Scope 3. You could therefore refer to the Scope 3 inventory as the emissions due to a company's supply chain, both upstream and downstream.

So since the GHG Protocol designated Scope 3 inventorization as optional, not all companies that report to the Carbon Disclosure Project provide those numbers - hence the reason for developing new Scope 3 guidelines. However, some companies have taken these matters into their own hands and ventured into the scary wilderness of value chain accounting. So while more than 1,700 companies worldwide are currently reporting to CDP, only about 200 are disclosing Scope 3 emissions other than the conventionals (i.e., business travel, employee commuting).

You'd expect oil & gas companies as well as vehicle manufacturers to post heavy Scope 3 figures since their products' downstream impacts fall within the Scope 3 zone. If you produce oil, and it is refined into gasoline and then combusted, all the emissions released by those processes would be included in your Scope 3. Now tell me what you think the magnitude of a single company's reach is?


How about 3.1% of total global fossil CO2 emissions? Don't overlook the word 'fossil,' because land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions may amount to about 1/3 of non-LULUCF emissions, meaning 3.1 would drop with that inclusion. Since the absolute number they provide is 743 mega-tonnes of CO2, which is far under 3.1% of 28 GtCO2 (not CO2e), as per 2005, it seems as if they're doing themselves a disservice. To help put this in context, CAIT shows that South America's 2005 CO2 emissions were only about 3% of the global total - but this is all wrapped up in one company's supply chain.

So what comes next? Well, GHG management, reduction targets, and supply chain cooperation hopefully. The beauty of the Scope 3 inventory framework is in emphasizing a company's sphere of influence over its supply chain partners. While you'll have more sway with your immediate neighbors, those who directly supply to you or who directly distribute your goods, if you're large enough to make waves then all neighbors will follow. Such has been the strategy of Wal-Mart who's launched an aggressive supply chain examination to determine where the greatest GHG reduction opportunities exist. This is no simple task - imagine having to go through 65,000+ suppliers. Well, all in a day's work to "rollback the prices." I hope that their program is successful in "rolling back" the emissions as well.

Climate Change Photography

I came across GHG Photos tonight, a site launched at the end of October that showcases the work of six photographers who are traveling the globe to visually document the effects of climate change. While many of these shots represent 'end results,' take a look at the winners of the UNFCCC CDM Photo Contest here where users submitted photos of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects. It's not clear to me how or why the First Place finish beat out the 2nd and 3rd. Maybe it had to do with failing to deliver CERs (snare drum please).

Live Earth, New7Wonders, and TreeHugging

Yesterday's Live Earth event, which featured concerts on all continents in a 24-hour campaign to spread awareness about climate change, came under intense spitfire from high-profile figures. Among them, the likes of Bob Geldof, organizer of the Live Aid concerts, and other artists like Roger Daltrey and Muse, jointly accused Live Earth performers of jetting around the globe in their private planes in a hypocritical bid for public attention to spotlight energy conservation and education about climate change.

While I'll side with the critics inasmuch as recognizing the carbon emissions caused by transportation to the event (though carbon offsets were purchased in the hopes of absolving guilt for this AND the event was regionalized partially to minimize transportation) runs counter to the ethic prevailing through the event, it would be myopic to let the criticism linger and not focus on the potential long-term gains from convincing large crowds of people to modify their lifestyles and decrease their carbon footprints. Of course any large-scale campaign to affect awareness on climate change will consume natural resources; you simply have to conduct a life-cycle assessment to see whether or not there's a net improvement.

What I'm more concerned with is not juxtaposing the good intentions of concert organizers and concert-goers against the actual outcomes, but the irony with which this event was timed perfectly with the release of the NEW Seven Wonders of the World list. The new Wonders list was compiled from some 100 million votes collected by SMS and internet ballots and replaces the ancient Greek list of sites found in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

This is ironic because it's obvious how this will spike tourism numbers for countries like Jordan, Brazil, and Peru among the others as vacationers worldwide will be seeking to witness these 'wonders' first-hand. The wonder that worries me is how this is compatible with widespread calls for reducing our reliance on aviation since unless you have the good fortune of living near Agra, India, good luck on visiting the Taj Mahal and not getting there by plane. I'm certain that's what Bertrand Piccard was hinting at with his appeals for climate change awareness at the announcement ceremony before he was removed from the stage.

I'd say that the difficulty of this situation has been made more apparent to me as I was browsing through the forums at a website I otherwise respect, TreeHugger, where a most disturbing thread on the connection between veganism and climate change had been posted. While I do agree that some of us vegans tend to be a bit proselytizing when it comes to animal ethics and the reasons to become vegan, I'd say there may be good cause to bring light to the carbon emissions caused by meat consumption. So the title of the article may have been innaccurately worded (something to the extent of vegans in Hummers causing less harm to the environment than meat-eaters in Priuses), the original email solicited one of the most rancorous displays of carnivorous aggression I've seen for some time. Honestly, we're not asking you to launch into why you love meat, why the animals are here for your well-being, why you think that biologically we're constructed to consume meat, etc. - we've heard it all before too many times to count, but I would appreciate you stepping down from your ivory tower for one moment to simply consider how your dietary choices affect the land from where your food comes. Not to do this because you are a thoughtful human, but because you are a self-branded 'environmentalist' spending your time tooling through the TreeHugger forums. The failure and unwillingness for even meat-eating environmentalists to be self-reflective and consider their personal impact means we'll never make it to 2050 without exceeding 550ppm.