At the end of the month, large industrial companies will report their greenhouse gas emissions data to the EPA—electronically, if they choose. And with e-GGRT, they can benchmark their sustainability efforts against their peers’.
About 7,000 companies considered “large industrial emitters” face a Sept. 30 deadline to file their 2010 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And, for the first time, they can file that sustainability data online, using the electronic greenhouse gas reporting tool (e-GGRT) that the EPA launched late last month.
e-GGRT is supposed to make the filing process easier—and greener than the paper route, I suppose. But there is another benefit to online data collection: the ability to share and compare the information. According to the EPA, the GHG data will be available to the public by the end of the year. Companies can use the sustainability information to help find new ways to decrease emissions, increase efficiency, and save money, according to the EPA.
That’s the same message offered by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a sustainability-focused organization that maintains a database of 3,000 or so companies that report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With the help of SAP, the group has created CDP Reporter Services, a business intelligence(BI) tool used to help businesses benchmark their performances.
Companies such as DuPont are using CDP Reporter Services to cull information for its internal strategy team, a company spokesperson said in a statement. Cisco taps into CDP analytics to confirm that its business partners are tracking their energy use and publicly reporting GHG emissions and reduction commitments to the CDP, the company said.
CDP’s BI application allows a manufacturer to take a deeper dive into the ROI of sustainability efforts, including identifying operational risks and opportunities. Likewise, the EPA’s e-GGRT will have a huge impact on future sustainability efforts, I suspect.
This new transparency into other companies’ carbon reduction efforts could lead to more creative sustainability strategies. For now, manufacturers are mostly concerned with regulatory compliance. The deadline looms, after all. But when the data has been filed and becomes available for review, it may stir the competitive juices, and even spark some ideas that could turn sustainability programs into some profitable business ventures.
Of course, how companies use the information hinges on the kind of data that is supplied and provided to the public. But now that there are tools in place to collect and analyze the information, more applications that will help companies make use of the data will inevitably follow.