Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Progress. Building significant capacity within
[their] organizations to understand fully the im-
plications of climate change for [their] business
and to develop a coherent business strategy for
minimizing risks and identifying opportunities.
(Caring for Climate, 2007)
have disclosed emissions in a comprehensive way,
identifying both emission reduction strategies and
intensity targets. 28% of firms report achieving
reductions in emission intensities, 37% report
some form of absolute emission levels. However,
57% of firms have demonstrated little progress,
either by submitting reports do not offer insight
into the firm's emissions and plans for abatement,
or by failing to submit any information at all.
As the environmental community pushes for
global and regional regulations on greenhouse
gas emissions, the question that is too often miss-
ing from the conversation is how successful will
companies be at revamping their operations, and
what types of guidance do they need, in order to
meet potential regulatory obligations. The com-
plex and ever-changing structures of most global
corporations make it very challenging to both ac-
curately count current emissions and predict the
time, effort and capital expenditure necessary to
meet future emissions reduction goals. In addi-
tion, until recently, almost all companies lacked
access to experts who knew how to properly set
targets, update business models and re-engineer
manufacturing processes to meet stated emissions
reduction targets.
Beyond these challenges, many companies
that have committed to reducing their emissions
have not received clear, uniform guidelines on
how best to tackle this challenge. There are a
range of programs that ask companies to report
on their emissions, however each program has
its own unique set of questions and framework
for reporting, making it hard for companies to
economize by applying lessons or frameworks
from one reporting scheme to another. Too often
these programs do not explicitly define how com-
panies should draw a system boundary to avoid
double counting while ensuring all emissions
they are responsible for are being captured (Pew
Center, 2004).
It is unclear whether companies currently have
the capacity to succeed in emissions reduction
Early-movers in emissions reduction could
benefit from a smoother transition into carbon-
regulated policy frameworks, significant cost-
savings, and develop ways to hedge against volatile
fossil fuel prices (Hoffman, 2005). However,
the strategic decision to transition a company to
a low carbon trajectory can often be extremely
challenging to implement. In addition, voluntary
initiatives with no clear targets may simply induce
companies to join and to benefit from being asso-
ciated with a climate-friendly movement, without
actually taking concrete actions towards reducing
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).
This chapter provides a qualitative and quan-
titative analysis of progress towards emissions
reduction for the 255 Large companies (out of
371 Small, Medium and Large companies) that
signed C4C. The Small and Medium-sized com-
panies that have signed Caring for Climate are not
included in this study. Graduate students at Yale
University conducted this research with the aim of
understanding whether voluntary GHG disclosure
programs such as C4C and the Carbon Disclosure
Project (CDP) are effective. The CDP is a non-
profit organization that requests greenhouse gas
emissions disclosure data from major corporations
throughout the world (Carbon Disclosure Project,
2010). Reporting formats for CDP are far more
amenable to systematic collection of data, there-
fore most of the information in this study is from
the C4C signatories that also participate in CDP.
Signatories to C4C agree to submit annual
“Communications on Progress” that are made
available to the public on the UNGC website
(Caring for Climate, 2010). Based on a review of
these submissions, a wide range of firm-behavior
