Monday the Chair of the SEC announced support of the commission’s proposal to mandate climate-risk disclosures by public companies and stated that, if adopted, it would provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information for making their investment decisions and would provide consistent and clear reporting obligations for issuers.
Companies within the metals supply chain and metals product manufacturers will be sorting out what this means for all of us. And like all of us, now including the SEC, scope 3 emissions seem to be the one challenging component of accounting for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to clearly understand.
First, a comment on scope 1 & 2 emissions. This does not need to be complex and intimidating determination. When you get right down to it, it’s a measure in large part of energy consumption, assigning emissions factors to the amount of energy products consumed, and summarizing the results in a CO2 GHG equivalency. Greenway Steel can help with this you can be certain. We understand the GHG Protocol accounting tools for GHG emissions. In a metals processing and manufacturing environment we know what it means to be consuming acetylene, associated custom emissions factors, and operating fork trucks and consuming gallons of propane. Are you using your own trucks, or do you lease trucks? These are examples we can help you work through in the GHG accounting process. When it gets right down to it, we all want to reduce our energy consumption. And that in turn reduces our emissions.
Scope 3 emissions are something that our industry will simply need to coordinate around standards for reporting. Most emissions through the supply chain will be associated with the embedded C in the metal products (the GHG, not in the actual chemical composition!) in inventory and used for manufacturing our products. Think of how many different products and suppliers and how often your inventory is changing. Industry and inventory averages will help simplify but again, consistency and standards in reporting will be necessary.
Determination of your organization’s carbon footprint is the first step in developing a GHG Emissions Reduction Strategy. That is important for demonstrating sustainability. And again, the process supports energy conservation.
Greenway Steel was founded with a goal of being instrumental in helping the metals supply chain be engaged in the transformational decarbonization of our industry. Let us know how we can help you.
Randy Charles, Founder, Greenway Steel
