Emissions Disclosure as a Business Virtue

New York Times (Kaufman) - Boeing and other enterprises are voluntarily doing what some might fiercely resist being forced to do: submitting detailed reports on how much they emit, largely through fossil fuel consumption, to a central clearinghouse. The information flows to the Carbon Disclosure Project, a small nonprofit organization based in London that sifts through the numbers and generates snapshots by industry sectors in different nations.

By giving enterprises a road map for measuring their emissions and pointing out how they compare with their peers, experts say, the voluntary project is persuading companies to change their energy practices well before many governments step in to regulate emissions...

Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist for Microsoft, which is helping the project make its data more accessible to the public, says the impact of the reports is growing. “With each year we are able to compare performance on greenhouse gas information with new levels of granularity,” he said. “Now we just have to hope that more people read it and care.”

In September, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it could require the nation’s biggest power plants and industrial operations to report greenhouse gas emissions as early as 2011. The United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have firmly opposed such regulation, saying that it would be legally and technically burdensome, drive up fuel costs by promoting renewable sources and send job overseas.

But nations that have already pressed ahead with regulations are prodding the United States to match their efforts. The European Union has been monitoring and limiting carbon dioxide emissions from its most energy-intensive sectors since 2005 through a cap and trade program.