What formula should your company use to pare back its greenhouse gas emissions? How much, exactly, should it reduce its carbon footprint? How much is enough or not enough? If your footprint increases along with your revenue, should you freak out or look at the intensity of your impact and not the absolute volume? And, if your company is experiencing (gasp!) growth, how do you balance two very real shareholder responsibilities.
After asking itself these questions many, many times internally, design software giant Autodesk has come up with a scientific approach to managing its greenhouse gas profile, and it is challenging other companies to embrace and adopt its formula. The methodology is called Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-stabilizing Targets, or the simpler C-FACT. It builds on the 2008 BT Climate Stabilization Intensity model, but ties the ideas in that formula more closely to requirements of corporate accounting systems. Here are the main principles of the Autodesk plan:
Emma Stewart, Autodesk's corporate environmental strategy specialist, said the company approached the problem after it realized that many companies (including its own) were randomly picking greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets based on guesswork not the same discipline they would use in their other types of budgeting and financial processes. PLUS, it also had a dilemma. During its fiscal years 2008 and 2009, Autodesk's total greenhouse gas emissions footprint actually increased by 1 percent. At the same time, though, the company's contribution to gross domestic product also increased, so Autodesk's carbon intensity actually dropped by 9 percent per employee and by 5 percent.
Autodesk's C-FACT model builds on the ideas in the 2008 BT Climate Stabilization Intensity model. It includes four basic phases:
Stewart says Autodesk is sharing its model with as many companies as possible and encouraging other businesses to adopt a more scientific method to reducing carbon levels in a manner appropriate to their individual business.
At Autodesk, Stewart says that each senior vice president is responsible for helping reach certain requirements related to their individual business division. "We don't want to prescribe to them what to do, but we will make recommendations, resources and education," she says. The company also is proactively encouraging employees who are big travelers to consider the ramifications of their actions.
You can read more about Autodesk's greenhouse gas emissions program and download its white paper about C-FACT at this link.
Here's a direct link to its new methodology.
One really interesting trend to watch will be the impact that a turnaround in the economy will have on carbon footprint reductions. As companies start to grow again at faster rates, will business executives remain true to their climate commitments?
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com