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Published in Heather Lovell, The Making of Low Carbon Economies, 2014
This experience was my first indication of the numerous definitions or frames of carbon accounting in use: physical, political, market-enabling, financial and social/environmental. Carbon accounting in these different senses has become an essential ‘enabler’ of several of society’s key responses to the problem of climate change, including national emission limitation commitments, corporate climate change performance targets and carbon markets. Yet its role and contribution is generally overlooked. Furthermore, the connections, overlaps and discontinuities between different forms of carbon accounting have not received sufficient critical attention: different manifestations of carbon accounting each tend to have their own institutions, normative practices and distinctive discourses, including academic literatures.
Accounting
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
The measurement of greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), was mentioned in Chapter 5 on climate change. Here we highlight other frameworks to calculate carbon footprints. This is also known as carbon accounting which, as a subset of sustainability accounting,10 focuses on the management and reporting of carbon emissions (Lodhia 2013). Other carbon accounting and reporting frameworks beyond the GHG Protocol that help companies monitor, control, measure and report their GHG emissions include the following: the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), which engages investors, companies and policymakers in better disclosure of environmental information to enable better decision-making on climate action,the CDSB (Climate Disclosure Standards Board) which works with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) to move climate disclosure into the mainstream and is committed to putting natural capital on a level footing with financial capital when it comes to corporate reporting,the ISO 14064 from the ISO 14000 series for carbon analysis which specifies principles and requirements for quantifying and removing GHG emissions. Industry-specific frameworks and guidelines for environmental accounting and reporting include for example: IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues and its climate change reporting framework; IOGP, the International Association of Oil & Gas producers, and; STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) (Robertson 2017). On a national level, the SASB – Sustainability Accounting Standards Board – provides reporting guidance for publicly traded companies in the US (Fogel 2016). On a global level, the United Nations Global Compact initiative encourages companies to adopt sustainability policies and to report on their implementation and performance accordingly in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anticorruption (Rezaee 2015). The UN Global Compact’s strategy is based on ten principles and supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN Global Compact 2019).
An incentive model between a contractor and multiple subcontractors in a green supply chain based on robust optimization
Published in Journal of Management Analytics, 2020
Precisely how to implement green building is debatable (Tuohy & Murphy, 2015). Currently, green building techniques have not been widely applied, especially in developing countries. This phenomenon is primarily manifested in unpracticed and unexperienced practitioners, such as green contractors who take the responsibility of designing and constructing, being unfamiliar with the new technologies. Moreover, since the process of design and construction is replete with various uncertain factors, the cost, duration, quality, and environment index of the green building remain obscure. This high degree of uncertainty means enormous risk and will exert an adverse impact on the application and promotion of these new building technologies. Meanwhile, the application of these technologies requires close cooperation between general contractors and other practitioners, such as end-users, developers, and subcontractors. So, effective relationship management and cooperation mechanism between these practitioners is critical to the development of the green building and, in particular, the benefit trade-off problem needs to be researched (Xu, Wang, & Tao, 2013). To the best of our knowledge, few studies have investigated this, especially the relationship between the contractor and his or her subcontractors. Besides, as carbon accounting is considered as a part of business-as-usual within the industry (Wong, Lindsay, Crameri, & Holdsworth, 2015) to respond to the carbon emission reduction targets put forward by governments, contractors have to take carbon emissions into account in the process of designing, evaluating, and constructing. Nevertheless, measuring and controlling carbon emissions is challenging for any organization (Dadhich, Genovese, Kumar, & Acquaye, 2015), and thus determining how to merge carbon emissions reduction policies into projects is requisite. Unfortunately, pertinent quantitative analyses are largely absent in the extant literature.
Evaluating greenhouse gas emission of transit agencies: A case study of Ontario, Canada
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 2021
Anahita Jami, Josipa Petrunic, Amer Shalaby
In summary, as the American Public Transportation Association (2018) states in its Standards Development Program, there are several reasons why a transit agency might strive to comprehensively quantify its GHG emissions:Communicating the benefits of transit and the contribution of transit toward wider emissions reduction targets by vehicle trip reductions.Ensuring eligibility for new funding sources: Climate change or carbon pricing policies reveal additional sources of funding for transit as well as the potential sale of offsets on carbon markets. This requires the quantification of emission savings and deploying this report card methodology will allow transit agencies to have readily accessible data for these funding sources.Reporting to carbon accounting organizations: In some countries there are organizations that maintain inventories of GHG emissions based on standardized protocols. In most cases, reporting is voluntary. For instance, in Canada, the Clean Fuel Standard Regulation requires the carbon intensity of each fuel to be determined and verified. Due to the circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic, Environment and Climate Change Canada delayed publication of proposed regulations which were scheduled for April 2020.Setting emissions targets in local/regional climate action plans: Many jurisdictions are creating climate action plans that identify strategies for reducing emissions (e.g., Quebec). This recommended report card will assist agencies in evaluating and demonstrating the regional emission reductions they can contribute, which in turn can result in additional financial support for the provision of transit and supporting activities.Supporting internal efforts to reduce emissions: Many transit agencies have goals to reduce GHG emissions (i.e., TTC), both from their own operations and from the wider community. This report card can assist to ensure that emissions be reported in a standardized way, allowing agencies to track their efforts and benchmark themselves against other agencies.