Businesses, investors and academics have launched an initiative to tackle the allegedly widespread practice of businesses failing to report all of their operational or scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Business Green, the ‘100% Club’ will share best practice and introduce new incentives to encourage firms to pursue complete disclosure of their Scope 1 emissions.
The initiative is backed by Imperial College London Business School and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, innovation body Climate-KIC, and Sustainable Nation Ireland.
The launch comes alongside an analysis that alleges that in 2016 thousands of companies reported on their carbon emissions, but only 20 provided data on 100 per cent of their operational emissions.
Full disclosure is ‘crucial’ for climate-risk management
Charles Donovan, Director of the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment at Imperial College Business School, said, “Companies are under increased pressure from stakeholders to disclose their approach to climate risk,” he said. “But if the underlying data isn’t up to scratch, then even the most sophisticated and robust risk management framework is rendered useless. Disclosures, of the quality expected by the 100% Club, are a crucial part of climate-risk management. Companies need to rise to the challenge.”
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting
The initiative coincides with changing emission reporting rules in the UK. In July 2018 the government announced the details of a new streamlined energy and carbon reporting framework (SECR) to replace the CRC, which will close at the end of the 2018-19 compliance year.
An exemption to the new framework allows unquoted companies to exempt a proportion of their energy use and emissions from reporting, provided they can explain why it would place a disproportional burden on them to report this data.
