With cities developing at a whirlwind pace, it's more urgent than ever to track the GHG emissions they are pumping into the atmosphere. In the August 2017 issue of TerraGreen, Aditi Phansalkar explores how frameworks including the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) are helping meet that challenge.

Many financial institutions measure and report their own greenhouse gas emissions, but the real impact is in their value chains. To address this gap, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative have begun developing guidance to help financial intermediaries assess the emissions from their lending and investments portfolios.

Today the World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) launched the first widely endorsed standard for cities to measure and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at a COP20 event featuring mayors and officials from cities around the world. 

By Laura Draucker - November 05, 2013

As home to 3.5 billion of the world’s population, cities and urban areas play a crucial role in combating global climate change. And today, many of their leaders are announcing steps to do just that.

Low-carbon development has become the core theme of China’s urbanization. In fact, it’s one of the country’s key strategies to achieve its target of reducing carbon intensity by 40-45 percent by 2020.

More than half the world’s people live in cities, and cities are responsible for more than 70 percent of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions on Earth. These dramatic statistics mean cities have a critical role to play in addressing climate change.

The Philippines Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Reporting Program (PhilGARP) was officially launched at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manila on November 30, 2006.

ICT companies and their customers will soon have common approaches and methodologies to calculate the carbon footprints of ICT products and services thanks to industry guidance due to be published at the end of the year.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol for the U.S. Public Sector was released today by the GHG Protocol Initiative and LMI. The protocol outlines how federal, state and local governments can account for their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Mexican government has adopted a new national climate change strategy that identifies the GHG Protocol-based Mexico GHG Program as the basis of a step-by-step approach to climate change mitigation.

EPA is creating a nationwide database of greenhouse gas emissions, an important first step on the path to reducing U.S. emissions. The plan would require 13,000 facilities to report their emissions. 

Last week’s Rio+20 conference failed to yield strong sustainability commitments from corporations. The gap between where we need to get to avoid climate change’s worst effects and the actions companies are willing to take to get us there have never been further apart.

Since its creation in 2002, the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program has assisted more than 150 companies to develop and implement long-term climate change strategies. This includes developing a GHG inventory, an inventory management plan, and a GHG reduction target. To replicate the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program's successful model in India, WRI, U.S. EPA and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Green Business Center (GBC) are partnering together to replicate the Climate Leaders program there.

Hurricane Sandy was a massive and deadly storm, extending more than 1,000 miles, bringing huge waves and more than 13 feet of water to parts of New York City. In Manhattan, floods swept away cars and overflowed subway stations.

WRI’s GHG Protocol Director, Pankaj Bhatia, delivered a keynote address on the new GHG Protocol Supply Chain Standards at the Life Cycle Management (LCM) Conference 2011. The Life Cycle Management conference series is one of the world’s leading forums for environmental, economic and social sustainability.

GHG Protocol has released a second draft of its Agricultural Guidance for open comment. The Agricultural Guidance is an international supplement to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard that aims to customize the latter to the agricultural sector, while addressing the unique challenges posed by the sector - accounting for reversible carbon stocks in soils and biomass, setting and tracking progress toward reduction targets against a background of highly variable emissions, quantifying emissions, etc.

On the evening of April 14th, WRI filled a role not normally reserved for environmental think tanks: VIP guest at a high-profile New York restaurant opening. Otarian, now open in New York City’s West Village, is a new boutique fast-casual restaurant chain based on the principles of sustainability and vegetarianism. Otarian is also the first global restaurant chain to track the carbon footprint of all of its menu items.

The Mexico GHG Program officially transitioned from a pilot project to a permanent program on October 2, marking a significant milestone for the program partners and 30 par