Amid the seemingly endless stream of climate change initiatives, programmes and campaigns, humble CSR managers must map out what their companies can actually control – both up- and downstream.
The trickle has become a flood. Even just a year ago, hard examples of what companies are actually doing about climate change, and informed opinion about what they ought to be doing, were few and far between.
Now everybody has a scheme, a campaign, a partnership or an initiative that could leave the humble CSR manager at a loss of where to engage. Everyone, it seems, from government, NGOs, the UN and scientists have a view.
The underlying question, as ever in CSR, is who in society is responsible for what? For companies, the starting point is map: what are we in clear control of, where do we only have influence directly or indirectly?
Actually, the carbon footprint of the entire product or service life-cycle says it all (Christian Aid – see below – among others, is right). In your own operations, you get to determine energy and emission strategy, and carbon neutrality is a realistic goal. Upstream you have direct influence through contract.
Downstream is harder and is usually where the big impacts are – through consumer use. In both of these, industry coalitions play a key role. Wider still is civil society and governments – where a ‘great debate’ is needed about the rules that must be set to protect our future, within which individual companies in a free market economy will have space to make the right decisions.
Here a certain humility by companies is required – as well as absolute transparency and honesty about lobbying activities.
Related news
Carbon lies
Companies are under-reporting their greenhouse gas emissions by hundreds of millions of tonnes according to a report by the charity, Christian Aid, released on February 19. In Coming Clean: Revealing the UK’s true carbon footprint the charity used data provided by Trucost, the environmental research agency. Christian Aid claims that of the FTSE 100 companies, only 16 adhere to existing carbon dioxide disclosure standards.
The charity believes that the small number of companies disclosing their carbon data is due to the voluntary nature of the standards – it is up to individual companies whether they adopt the guidelines or not – and calls for the government to develop mandatory disclosure standards in order to force firms to admit to – and reduce – their carbon footprint. The charity said it wanted carbon calculation and reporting standards to be included in the climate change bill as the bill is the “best existing opportunity for the government to act on company emissions declarations”.
The report makes the following recommendations to companies:
– calculate all CO2 emissions
– declare these to an agreed standard, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol
– commit to reducing emissions by 5% per year.
Wal-Mart is to challenge its suppliers, customers and communities to reduce their carbon footprints in a new all-encompassing sustainability initiative. The “six-path”, company-wide policy, known as Sustainability 360, was launched by the president and CEO, Scott Lee, at the Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme, in London, on February 1 and aims to reduce the company’s overall carbon footprint by engaging all its stakeholders. For example, Wal-Mart has asked its suppliers to cut packaging by 5% by 2013, which – according to the company – will take 213,000 trucks off the road and save around 67m gallons of diesel fuel per year.
Scott also highlighted the leadership that Wal-Mart’s UK operation, Asda, had taken in sustainability issues, stating that it is on track to send zero waste to landfill by 2010. He challenged the conference delegates, which included government representatives, NGO officials and business executives, to play their part in ensuring sustainability objectives remain on track, saying: “We all have an opportunity to be more sustainable. But even more, we have a responsibility. We need to be sustainable companies and countries made up of people who live sustainable lives.”
Ten US companies have been placed on a Climate Watch List because they are lagging behind in their response to climate change. The list, formed by Ceres – a coalition of investors and environmental groups worth $200m in assets – includes the bank, Wells Fargo as well as the oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
New caps on carbon dioxide emissions from passenger cars will be “damaging to the European economy” according to the car manufacturers in the region. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association said that it “cannot agree with the proposals” by the European Commission to limit carbon dioxide emissions to 120g CO2 per km by 2012 and that this will damage the “wealth, employment and growth potential” of the car industry in the EU.
Car manufacturers will be expected to adhere to the guidelines – launched by the European Commission on February 7 as part of a wider strategy with regard to the European automobile industry – by ensuring that all newly manufactured cars do not emit more than 120g CO2 for every km driven. The commission believes that the new cars will be affordable and that the mandatory target will “stimulate research and development” – suggesting that there will be no, or few, job losses. It went on to say that the strategy will increase competitiveness because fuel efficiency is becoming an “increasingly competitive factor for car manufacturers as global constraints on carbon emissions tighten”. The automotive industry is vital for the European economy – it represents 3% of total European GDP and 7% of employment – however, road transport is also the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (after power generation).
The government published its draft climate-change bill on March 13 – the first of its kind in the world – that sets out a plan for moving the UK towards a low-carbon economy in a bid to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The main points of the draft bill include:
A series of targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The aim is to reduce Britain’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, and 26-32% by 2020. The targets will be legally binding.
A system of mandatory five-year ‘carbon budgets’, which will be set 15 years ahead, that will encourage investment in low-carbon technologies.
A statutory body – the Committee on Climate Change – that will provide independent expert advice and guidance to the government on achieving its targets and staying within its carbon budgets.
Power that will enable the government to more easily implement policies to cut carbon emissions.
Annual open and transparent reporting to Parliament. The Committee on Climate Change will provide an independent progress report to which the government must respond. In this way the government will be held to account.
The government will be required to report every five years on present and future impacts of climate change and what policies and proposals it is developing to adapt to the phenomenon.
HSBC is partnering with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) to fund the largest field experiment on the long-term effects of climate change on the world’s forests. The 5-year, $8m, alliance will enable the STRI’s Center for Tropical Forest Science to expand and be co-ordinated into a Global Earth Observatory system. Contact – HSBC, 020 7991 8888, www.hsbc.com; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, 001 202 633 4014, www.stri.org/index
On February 9, Virgin founder Richard Branson launched a climate prize to encourage the invention of a device that will absorb and store carbon dioxide, and potentially remove tonnes of the gas from the atmosphere. The winner of the prize is expected to receive around £10m.Contact – Virgin, www.virgin.com; Friends of the Earth & 020 7490 1555 www.foe.co.uk
BT is aiming to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2016. It has also extended its Green Energy contract until 2010. Through the contract npower and British Gas will provide BT with renewable energy and accredited combined heat and power. Contact – BT, www.bt.com
IPCC report
Climate change is mainly caused by human activity according to the long-awaited Fourth Assessment Report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on February 2. The IPCC report – Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis – states that “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”. It found that “discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind pattern”.
The third assessment report, released in 2001, stated that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
‘Likely’ has been joined by a ‘very’, which means the probability of global warming having a human cause is very high – about 90%. Even if greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilised now, “anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks”.
Barclays announced on March 12 that it has gone carbon neutral in the UK, as part of a wider commitment to reduce its carbon footprint and manage its impact on the environment.
The company has calculated the level of carbon emissions it needs to offset to achieve carbon neutral status. This offsetting has been achieved through Certified Emissions Reductions, following the process set out by the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, and by investing in small scale projects such as wind power in India, producing Verified Emissions Reduction credits, which are not covered by legislation but verified using voluntary guidelines or standards.
The company will also continue the ongoing process of improving its energy efficiency, and increasing use of renewable energy – sourcing 50% of the energy used by its UK operations from green sources from April 2007. It hopes that in turn this will reduce the company’s overall carbon emissions by about 120,000 tonnes annually.
Andrew Flett, head of environmental management, emphasised that “going carbon neutral is a milestone in our environmental strategy but is not an end in itself” and added that the company would also be “focusing on energy consumption and sourcing an increasing part of it from
green sources”.
In order to ensure the transparency of the process, ICF International is to provide verification of the emission inventory at Barclays as well as of the accounting and offsetting processes, which is to be included in the Corporate Responsibility Report, due to be published in April 2007. Contact – Barclays, www.barclays.com/climatechange
COMMENTS