NEW YORK, NY — Roughly 2,500 global organizations that report climate change data to the Carbon Disclosure Project will have access to an upgraded reporting system next year it hopes will become the global de facto standard.
CDP said Thursday it is tapping the expertise of industry powerhouses Accenture, Microsoft and SAP to build the new reporting platform, scheduled for debut in February 2010.
Among the enhancements: data that can be more easily shared and analyzed by investors, while reporters will have access to new benchmarking capabilities that will allow them to compare their performance to others within their sector or geography. The emissions data can also be analyzed at a more granular level, such as on a business division, facility or corporate-wide basis.
“If you think about it -- and it’s a key point of this whole project -- national governments can only tax or regulate emissions within their own borders, but global corporations have operations in multiple countries,” CDP president Paul Dickinson told ClimateBiz.com. “This is an attempt to connect the dots.”
Accenture will provide guidance on the new reporting platform’s implementation, while Microsoft will focus on its data-capture aspects and SAP will work on the storage and delivery of the reports and dashboards.
The CDP, whose website offers access to free climate change data from more than 2,000 organizations, made the announcement Thursday during Climate Week in New York, which runs through Saturday. The nonprofit also used the occasion to launch a series of reports detailing global trends in corporate climate reporting.
Along with the CDP, the partners behind Climate Week include The Climate Group, the Danish government, United Nations Foundation, Tck Tck Tck campaign, City of New York and the U.N.’s Seal the Deal campaign. The event is touted as a precursor to international climate change treaty talks in Copenhagen in December.
It’s been a whirlwind week that brought a slew of climate-related developments, including more than 500 business leaders issuing what they called a “Climate Communique” on Tuesday to heads of state and governments at the U.N. Summit on Climate Change, which was also held in New York. The message from the group, whose signatories include Coca Cola, Deloitte and GE, revolved around the negative impacts from unbridled climate change on future economic development.
The group called for developing countries to adopt science-based emissions reduction targets that will limit global average temperature rise to less than 2 degrees, a number widely accepted as the threshold to catastrophic climate change. The petition also called for developing countries to do their part by also creating emissions reduction plans. Other recommendations include the creation of a robust global greenhouse gas emissions market, adaptation framework and funding mechanism, and credible reporting and verification systems, among others.
A report unveiled by The Climate Group, “Cutting the Cost,” found that reducing emissions can drive gross domestic product and employment in economies around the world while potentially dropping the cost of carbon to as little as $4 per tonne and hastening sustainable growth in developing countries.
There was also much of the buzz at the summit that focused on China’s plans to improve its environmental record, including generating 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources, boosting forest land by roughly 150,000 square miles and cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by a “notable” margin.
Japan also upped the ante by committing to reduce emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. In comparison, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech that drew cautious praise but many pointed out its lack of specific targets or U.S. pledges.
"President Obama said many of the right things in his speech to the United Nations, and his personal commitment to action on this issue is not in question," Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement this week. "But the real test is whether he can work with Senate leaders to get meaningful action on clean energy and climate legislation in the few months remaining before the Copenhagen climate summit."