Emission accountability bridges the gap between the Glasgow COP and our everyday life
03.12.2021
MARKUS KLIMSCHEFFSKIJ
In our previous blog, Matthew wrote about the Glasgow COP26 and its importance. Although partly with disappointing results, the meeting highlighted the shared concern among people, companies, and governments.
This is a good starting point, but still far away from our everyday life. Is it enough that suit-men and women meetup once a year, while businesses state their support (or opposition) in social media and protestors voice their opinions outside the glass walls? Most people and companies want to incorporate sustainability and climate change mitigation into their daily operation. How can we know if this incorporation is a success?
Everyone wants to be sustainable…or at least claim to be
Sustainability is the buzzword of our time. It can have many facets linked to social, economic, or environmental sustainability. These are categorized for example in the UN SDGs.
Nowadays the aspiration for sustainability is widely recognized. The increasing trend is to put this ambition at the heart of B2C and B2B communication. Sustainability claims are appealing and widespread – think 80% recycled plastic, biogas fueled transportation, CO2 compensated wine etc. While we find sustainability important, we also need to be able to assess these claims. Which of the hundreds of sustainability claims encountered every day actually matter?
With regards to CO2, fortunately there has been significant progress in the standardization of these claims onto common metrics. I hope and foresee the next trend to be consumers and businesses using the tools already developed (see figure below) to better assess sustainability claims. Building this increased awareness will, however, require work. For example, with regards to carbon handprinting, there’s hardly any standardization or accountability, and it is often made to serve marketing purposes primarily.
Evolution and need for accountability of the carbon footprint
The fundamental driver for different emission accounting standards is the fact that global emissions are generated by only a “handful of companies”. They operate in e.g. the energy sector, energy intensive industry, agriculture as well as transportation. These companies generate the emissions to serve the 99% of global companies (B2B) who consume their services as well as consumers (B2C); the needs of both are indirectly the cause of those emissions.
In the past years and decades, the Scope 1,2,3, thinking of the GHG protocol has become the standard for allocating emissions down the value stream. The same approach is used by all relevant carbon accounting standards. This has been a tremendous effort in bringing companies and individuals to account for the emissions they indirectly cause.
Is the focus on things that look good or on things that matter?
For a company to set a meaningful carbon roadmap, which accounts for all scopes, it needs the ability to calculate, control and influence its direct and indirect emissions. This is hard. In fact, so hard that companies often end up with a sustainability strategy emphasizing the use of shared bikes to commute to the office while they make no attempts to source for less carbon intensive steel, recycled materials, or clean energy. This leads to doing nice things, for sure, but they have absolutely no relevance from the “Glasgow” perspective.
Going up the value chain and challenging the key suppliers to cut their emissions is time and resource consuming. Just as is designing more energy efficient products that cause less emissions within the customer base. But It is the only way to have a meaningful sustainability strategy
Electricity accounting is needed to bridge the gap between production and consumption
As Grexel, we take pride in being part of the solution. We help bridge the accounting gap between companies using energy and those producing it. Let’s still make one thing absolutely clear: GOs should never compete with direct actions of energy consuming companies to invest in energy savings, heat pumps, solar panels, or windmills etc.
However, in most cases it is unfeasible for all companies and individuals to become completely energy self-sufficient. Thus, we absolutely need GOs as a complementary tool for companies and individuals to strive for carbon neutrality.
For the past decades, the energy transition has been much about electricity – windmills replacing coal in the power mix. Now, it is unquestionable that clean energy solutions are rolled out to the gas and heating and cooling sectors. Also hydrogen is envisioned with a prominent role in sector integration. It is more important than ever that the surrounding infrastructure, including Guarantees of Origin, supports the expansion of the energy transition. As I wrote in my previous blog, we can’t reinvent the wheel 4 times!
Grexel answered this change in our operating environment by developing G-REX. G-REX can include all energy carriers effortlessly. The system is going live in December 2021 and will host all energy carriers eligible for Guarantees of Origin in the first half of 2022.
Beacon of hope in global emissions or just a covid drop?
Coming back to Glasgow, year 2020 marked a historic 5,7% drop in global energy related CO2 emissions (IEA 2021[1]). This was only the second annual drop since 1990, and still hugely eclipsed 2009’s drop of 1,3%. As energy accounts for roughly 75% of global GHG emissions[2], this is big news!
On the negative side, the overall trend is clear, showing a more than 50% increase from 1990 and forecasts for 2021 indicating a return to the 2019 level (IEA 2021). Still, the 2020 drop might be taken as a beacon of hope that bending the curve is still within our reach. Let’s all work towards it and take responsibility for not only the emissions we generate, but also the ones we cause.