TRIRIGA Insights
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Proposed Rule Drives Need to Measure Greenhouse Gases from Facilities
In a release on March 10th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal that all major sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions be reported into a national database.
According to the EPA's release, approximately 13,000 facilities would be covered across the United States. Organizations with energy intensive operations or those with large multi-building campuses will likely be required to report carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions in a new rule under the Clean Air Act.
According to a report published by The Economist, organizations reported significant challenges in achieving their sustainability goals including:
- Establishing meaningful benchmarks or metrics to measure sustainability performance (80 percent)
- Access to reliable internal data (77 percent)
- Tools to monitor global performance e.g. IT, scorecards etc. (79 percent)
Many organizations will struggle with this new rule unless they understand the need to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions.