Are You Prepared to Report Your Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
It's an understatement to say environmentalists were disheartened by Senator Reid's announcement last week that a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill would be tabled for the year. But, fear not, environmentalists - and, be fearful, unprepared federal contractors - because the federal government will be regulating greenhouse gas emissions in other ways.
Back in October 2009, we talked about the groundbreaking Executive Order 13514, which set advanced sustainability requirements for the federal government. One of the most important parts of the Order is Section 13, which asks the General Services Administration to look into the feasibility of requiring vendors and contractors to report greenhouse gas emissions.
The GSA recently released its report, which concludes that it is feasible to implement a "phased approach, for the Federal Government to track and reduce its scope 3 supply chain emissions through coordination with suppliers and other stakeholders." In short, a greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirement will be phased in, and eventually mandated for federal contracts.
For federal contractors - and eventually state and local contractors - tracking, reporting, and reducing emissions will become an important strategy for winning government contracts.
While much of the focus of Green Building Law Update has been on green building certification, I plan to shift gears in the coming months and focus more on greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for federal contractors. Why?
My concern is that construction contractors are not prepared to report greenhouse gas emissions.
Are you prepared to report your greenhouse gas emissions?
Photo credit: melancholic optimist
While reporting GHG emissions may appear difficult (and perhaps even impractical -- doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to do it), it is a step towards recognizing the true impact of our buildings. (Gee, if saving the environment were easy we would have done it 30 years ago or we'd wait until only our toes were left to hang on to the precipice.)
From an operations perspective, green designers are making efforts to reduce our GHG emissions, energy use and carbon footprint to zero. At the same time, we are trying to make buildings more enduring and adaptable. Once we have achieved these, we will need to recognize that the remaining impacts are due to the transportation associated with use of the structure and the impact associated with the components of the building. This brings greater attention to building material and components choice, as the transportation to and from the building is the same regardless of what goes into the building (all things otherwise being equal, of course.) Hence, the importance of meaningful Life Cycle Inventory data and Assessment tools.
As I read it, the GSA does not yet incorporate the emissions caused by the manufacture of most products (scope 3). There is a problem with this thinking in that it essentially allows/encourages specifiers to buy from offshore and to 'export' their GHG emissions to other jurisdictions and puts North American manufacturers at a disadvantage, irrespective of transportation impacts, which are generally insignificant relative to manufacturing emissions.
This reinforces the rationale for rating tools (and procurement policies) to ensure proper LCA requirements are rigorous, comprehensive and required. Environmental Product Declarations -- de rigueur in Europe -- would be a good start.
As a sidebar, I also found it interesting the Senior Sustainability officer for GSA has a last name 'Leeds'. (Note -- just one capital letter but with an 's').
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