Most carbon emissions caused by businesses are hidden from sight. US and California regulators are pushing to require companies fully disclose them.
For many companies, those indirect emissions dwarf all the rest. Some companies and business groups contend that it is unfair to hold them responsible for pollution that they may not directly control. A graphics card maker, for example, may say it cannot control the coal plants that power its suppliers' factories in distant countries; an oil company might argue that it doesn't control how its customers use its products. They may drill it, but customers burn it.
Van Engelen adds that the requirement to report on supply chain emissions will also end up passing the burden of carbon accounting to smaller suppliers. They might not be subject to the rules themselves, but they'd be pressed by large corporations to provide data. Wiener says he wants the rules, if passed, “to be implementable,” and he notes that the bill allows the use of formulas and averages to assess supply chain emissions, rather than tracking down each and every supplier.
But advocates of the new measures say their point is not perfect accounting, but rather to force more of the transparency needed to start tackling a systemic challenge. Only the largest corporations have the kind of visibility into and leverage over their supply chains to demand reductions in emissions. If the whole world can see those dirty secrets, maybe they’ll be spurred into action.
She adds that the California rules are complementary to the SEC rules, applying to a slightly different set of companies. But ifto the SEC’s rules—some expected to come from Republican attorneys general waging a broader war against corporate sustainability pledges—water down or delay that effort, California’s law could also serve as a backstop, Wiener says.
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