In this article I will be talking about why the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is broken and what we can do to fix it.

I will describe four changes that could have a big impact on how organizations deliver their promises to decarbonize. I will get down into the weeds somewhat but please bear with me – this stuff is important. The changes I am proposing are:

1. extend Scope 2 to include all energy carriers such as Hydrogen, in order to avoid emissions ‘leakage’ to Scope 3
2. introduce additionality rules around market-based reporting of Scope 2 emissions
3. use GWP20 emissions factors instead of GWP100 
4. include Hydrogen as a greenhouse gas

I can almost sense your eyes glazing over. This looks uber-geeky, technical and deep into the detail of the GHG Protocol. But let me emphasize: these changes will have a huge effect on our ability to deliver urgent effective emissions reductions.

I have sought to bring this piece to life with real-world examples. My hope is that you, the reader, will understand the issues involved and share this post and help lobby for the changes proposed. The only way this will move the dial is if these changes are implemented. If you are connected with folks in the WRI or WBCSD who are responsible for the Protocol, please draw their attention to the points raised – we are in the territory here of ‘unintended consequences’ not deliberate miss-design, so please be nice!

The SustainSuccess website has been updated – the content and layout remain largely unchanged but under the bonnet there is a new template and the scripting language has been updated. If you encounter any problems with the new site, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email message at mail@sustainsuccess.co.uk. Thanks!

Every day this week I am uploading a poster taken from the contents of my book on energy and resource efficiency – to help fellow practitioners communicate the benefits and processes that will unlock value in their organizations and sustain change.

This is Poster 6 summarizing the People and Activities in an energy or resource efficiency programme following the my 3M’s methodology (see Poster 1).

This starkly dispels the conventional notion that energy / resource efficiency are an engineering problem. In fact ‘Business Management’ (aka operational or line management) is the role that has most contact points in the process.

Clearly the emphasis will change from organization to organization. You can use this approach when considering your own efficiency efforts. List the task you need to accomplish on each row, and then identify the roles which are critical to its success in the columns. You may be surprised at the results!

Every day this week I am uploading a poster taken from the contents of my book on energy and resource efficiency – to help fellow practitioners communicate the benefits and processes that will unlock value in their organizations and sustain change.

Today is day 5 and I am providing a poster summarizing the sources of funding for energy and resource efficiency.

Far too often “we don’t have the money” is cited as an excuse for inaction. And yet, energy and resource efficiency improvements often yield returns much greater than businesses expect from core investments or individuals would get from their savings.

In Chapter 18 of my book I explore many different options to fund projects, their pros and cons and how to choose amongst them. You may be surprised to learn that it is often not money that is the problem, it is being able to unlock money.

Taken together with Chapter 17 on Financial Analysis, I hope to equip the reader with the ability to make a powerful and compelling business case for investment now.

Every day this week I am uploading a poster taken from the contents of my book on energy and resource efficiency – to help fellow practitioners communicate the benefits and processes that will unlock value in their organizations and sustain change.

Today is day 4 and I am providing a poster showing World Mineral Scarcity taken from the National Minerals Information Centre 2016 report.

The table is sorted by reserve years. It is interesting to note that many minerals that folks seem to get all worked up about here on LinkedIn, such as Lithium, Cobalt and Rare Earths are actually not as scarce as one would think with Reserve Years of 371, 60 and 1,273 respectively. There are however problems with most of these minerals (indicated by the red cells) such as low recycling rates in some cases (Lithium < 1%), high US import reliance (60%, 68% and 100% respectively) and production concentration (China had 90% of the Rare Earth production in 2016).

It is important to understand where supply chain risks lie. My book goes into more details, such as the fact that some of these minerals are only extracted as a byproduct of other extraction, so the picture is more complex.

See the sidebar to the right to download your free copy of the book.

Every day this week I am uploading a poster taken from the contents of my book on energy and resource efficiency – to help fellow practitioners communicate the benefits and processes that will unlock value in their organizations and sustain change.

Today is day 3 and I am providing a flowchart to enable folks to select the most appropriate Measurement and Verification (M&V) technique.

Attracting third-part funding or investment into energy efficiency measures requires us to be able to unambiguously assess the savings that have been made, out of which the repayments are usually taken. This involves being able to calculate what is known as the “counterfactual”, i.e. what would have happened if we hadn’t made the investment.

Fortunately some clever folks at the IMVP, FEMVP and Investor Confidence Project have developed formal methods to undertake these calculation.

Every day this week I am uploading a poster taken from the contents of my book on energy and resource efficiency – to help fellow practitioners communicate the benefits and processes that will unlock value in their organizations and sustain change.

Today is day 2 and I am illustrating how energy and resource efficiency can improve ‘return on equity’ for shareholders:

DuPont Formula: Return on equity = net profit margin * asset turnover * financial leverage

Net profit margin: It is obvious that we can make money if we increase our profit margin on every item we sell, for example by using less energy….

Asset turnover: We can also make money by producing more items from our existing plant, i.e. if we are more productive, for example by increasing capacity through greater efficiency.

Financial leverage: Shareholders can make a greater return if someone else (e.g. a bank) pays for the investment in equipment. However too high a leverage will lead to a worry about the company’s ability to service the debt. An example here is that a highly efficient building will get better tenants which will lead to better ‘covenant terms’ so the landlord can get a higher mortgage…