PwC, the leading professional services firm, welcomes the new Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) and Product Life Cycle accounting and reporting standards, launched by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol recently.

The standards, which expand the scale and scope of current carbon emissions accounting, were developed through a multi-stakeholder process led by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and included extensive PwC input over the past three years. Business leaders, NGOs, academics, and policymakers were also involved in this multi-stakeholder standards development process.

Malcolm Preston, Global Sustainability and Climate Change leader, PwC, said:

“We expect these standards to be of particular interest to businesses in the aerospace and defence, automotive, industrial products, information technology, retail and consumer, and utility sectors.

“Value chain and product life cycle reporting will allow stakeholders to better assess an organisation’s emissions across their entire value chain, which will help optimise purchasing decisions and product efficiency. It is hoped companies will eventually seek to reduce their value chain emissions, increasing material use and product efficiency. As a result, companies will be able to understand and manage activities they influence, not just what they control.”

While reporting Scope 3 emissions is optional at this point, increasingly, organisations, government agencies and stakeholders are calling for data around these emissions, for example in annual data requests or Requests for Proposals (RFPs).

Malcolm Preston, Global Sustainability and Climate Change leader, PwC, continued:

“PwC’s sustainability practice has been closely involved in developing these new standards. They have been designed to promote consistency, transparency, accuracy, completeness and the relevance of carbon emissions reporting. We look forward to a
future in which companies and stakeholders better understand their sources of emissions and the impacts of their business activities, and take the necessary steps to reduce them, benefiting businesses and our climate’s sustainability at large.

“Companies will have to take care to understand the new accounting and reporting requirements, establish strategies for measuring and reducing their emissions, and develop and implement processes and systems for reporting. The standards also create a platform for stakeholders and companies to work together in a partnership to manage emissions.”