Tag Archives: reporting

The most popular suite of tools to measure and manage greenhouse gases just got a lot more complete — allowing companies to track the impact of their products from natural resources and raw materials, through manufacturing, use and disposal, and providing a detailed framework to measure companies’ “everything else” Scope 3 emissions.   

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative (a collaboration between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) finalized its two newest global greenhouse gas standards on October 4. The GHG Protocol are the most widely used suite of accounting tools for measuring,… More

Could carbon-intensive industries and businesses overlooking sustainability soon see their credit ratings fall as a result?   Perhaps. According to an article in yesterday’s Daily Environment Report, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) is working on ways to integrate the risks of greenhouse gases into its corporate credit ratings system. The move seems to be driven by factors such as tightening of the EU emissions trading scheme in its third phase, beginning in 2012,… More

Now that the SEC has indicated that public companies should be considering climate change in evaluating financial risks, the pressing questions include what should be evaluated and how it should be reported.  ASTM’s newly released standard on Financial Disclosures Attributed to Climate Change, E2718-10 may be just the thing.  The standard, which has been under development for the last 2 years, provides guidance on processes for identifying,… More

The US Securities and Exchange Commission released a staff bulletin yesterday that reverses a Bush administration policy that excluded shareholder resolutions which asked companies to disclose their climate-related financial exposure. While not the rule-making we discussed last week, this could be a significant change for the boards of large companies who may now be forced to respond to shareholder concerns about the risks that greenhouse gases and climate change can create.… More

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is re-examining its rules regarding whether companies should or must disclose climate change related risks. According to an article in ClimateWire, revisions could be issued by the end of October. On Friday, SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter said that SEC staff are working on preparing recommendations, and two options are still on the table. One option is a rule-making that would set specific rules for disclosing climate risks.… More

EPA released its final version of the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule today.  The Rule (which we blogged about in its draft form here) will require large emitters of greenhouse gases to begin collecting emissions data on January 1, 2010 and file their first self-certified reports in March 2011.  The EPA will then verify the data, as in other Clean Air Act programs. The new program will cover approximately 85% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and apply to roughly 10,000 facilities,… More

An update to a development we noted a few weeks ago —  as reported by Climate Wire today, at the national meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) yesterday, regulatory officials from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) unanimously voted in favor of rules requiring insurers to disclose the impacts of climate change on their business decisions. … More

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed regulations which create the first nationwide system for reporting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted by major sources in the US.  The proposed regulations are promulgated pursuant to the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act  which was signed into law in December 2007, and instructs the EPA to require mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors of the economy.… More

Strange as it sounds, the next industry group to take substantive action on climate change might just be insurers.  In Tuesday’s key vote by the Climate Change and Global Warming Task Force of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, 18 state insurance commissioners voted to approve rules requiring insurers to disclose the impacts of climate change on their business decisions. If the rules are approved by the full committee in March, and each state adopts them,… More