With the recognition of climate risk as financial risk, the implementation of climate disclosure regulations, and increasing concern from stakeholders, the pressure on organizations to measure their greenhouse gas emissions is growing.  This newly discovered demand for enterprises to measure their carbon emissions has led to an increased interest in how to begin the complicated process. 

One of the first steps, as defined by the primary framework for carbon accounting, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), is to ensure your processes are aligned with the relevant calculation methods and reporting frameworks. As such, it is critical to define the organizational and operational boundaries of your carbon measurements, which provide a better understanding of what to measure within the operations of an organization.

As the climate crisis accelerates, manual carbon accounting is no longer a viable option. Demand has grown for a digitized solution for emissions disclosure. 

The good news is organizations around the world do report carbon data, albeit in disparate ways. 

On May 17th, ERM issued a report, Costs and Benefits of Climate-Related Disclosure Activities by Corporate Issuers and Institutional Investors. The report, commissioned by Persefoni and Ceres, surveyed companies and investors and found that the responding companies average $533,000 per year on climate-related disclosure activities. This data is important in the context of the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rules because it shows that companies aren’t starting from scratch. Many companies are already doing a lot of climate reporting even absent new disclosure rules. What’s more, these costs don’t reflect the use of new technologies, which should reduce reporting costs for companies.