Semafor: “Tech Giants Clash over How to Measure Their Carbon Footprint”
RFF Fellow Aaron Bergman pulls from his recent blog posts to reflect on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s proposed corporate greenhouse gas accounting standards.
“Conversely, proponents of the market-based approach argue that since individual electrons can’t be traced through the grid, the whole concept of location and time matching is at best a kind of useful fiction. Why not leverage the fungibility of the grid to push investment where it will have the most impact in reducing existing fossil fuel consumption? And without market-based accounting, what should an operator of a large data center in a cloudy, windless place do? What about a much smaller company whose power demands are below the normal threshold for a reasonably priced renewable energy deal? Both would face a choice between higher bills or higher reported emissions. And as much as companies might want to stick to their climate goals, it’s likely the cost and logistical hurdles of signing clean power contracts under the new rules could lead to fewer deals being signed, said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at the think tank Resources for the Future, ‘and that would hurt the deployment of clean energy, which would be bad for emissions.’”
