Calls for uniform voluntary national emissions reporting standards

Colin Dimitroff, Principal Sustainability & Climate Change of URS Australia, an engineering and environmental adviser, has called for a set of uniform voluntary national emissions reporting standards to guide the development of emissions reporting — and accelerate reduction of emissions — by companies lying outside mandatory reporting regimes.

According to Dimitroff, whose climate change practice group advises companies on strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions, the lack of consistent data around key sources of emissions in the manufacturing value chain and absence of a standard non-mandatory reporting framework are the main barriers to voluntary reporting of whole-of-organisation greenhouse emissions.

The Department of Climate Change has released a discussion paper with the view to establishing a national carbon offset standard for the purposes of becoming carbon neutral.

However, Dimitroff commented that “a uniform national reporting standard would also play a significant role to encouraging voluntary participation in reducing ‘Scope 3’ emissions amongst companies seeking to reduce, offset and become carbon neutral”.

Supply chain emissions fall within the 'scope 3' category in international and local reporting guidelines. They are not required to be reported by the customer of the goods and services under the mandatory schemes such as the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme (CPRS) and existing National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System (NGER).

However, these emissions are essential to companies wishing to calculate the entire carbon footprint. The high cost of collection of this data is hindering efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“We are seeing a huge groundswell of companies, especially SMEs, that are not bound by mandatory reporting regimes but want to quantify their carbon footprint and formalise strategies to reduce this footprint,” said Dimitroff.

“But many are turned off by poor access to what is often inconsistent and unreliable data, often within their own organisations and supply chain, as well as a lack of direction to guide how their emissions should be recorded and voluntarily reported. Consequently, the high cost of reporting is a particular deterrent to companies taking up the mantle of carbon abatement.

“Often a majority of an organisation's carbon footprint can be traced back to the key areas of energy consumption, transport and waste disposal. But sourcing raw emissions data from diverse transport providers, for example, is problematic because few account for emissions in a consistent and reliable way.

“Also, while energy consumption data can be obtained from their provider easily enough, many companies have tenancy agreements under which energy usage is built into the rent, blurring accountability for the energy footprint.

“A uniform national framework to guide the recording and reporting of supply chain emissions would be a big step in driving growth in voluntary carbon reporting and thereby supporting efforts to reduce emissions."

The call to standardise non-mandatory reporting is given impetus by the release of a report by emissions trading consultancy Reputex last December revealing that up to 76% of large companies’ emissions are embedded in its supply chain.

With some large emitters expected to pass on a large part of the cost of emissions permits under the CPRS, the need to quantify precisely the contributions the supply chain makes to an organisation’s emissions footprint becomes critical.

Using the principles and methodology of life cycle assessment when calculating greenhouse emissions of the life cycle of a product, for example, provides a framework; however, the weak link to date has been the lack of available and credible data across many Australian industries.

“Anything that streamlines the process of quantifying emissions at different points of the production and distribution chain contributes to a more cost-effective and proactive carbon reporting,” Dimitroff said.

“But it will also clearly be in the interests of smaller players in the chain to be able to demonstrate with certainty and rigour their own contribution to a large emitter’s aggregate footprint — pointing once again to a uniform framework.”