WEBINAR - Market-Based Methods in Greenhouse Gas Accounting

The methodology for calculating greenhouse gas emissions could be on the cusp of a major change. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is currently considering revisions to its framework for attributing “Scope 2” emissions, or emissions from individual electricity consumers, such as data centers connected to the electric grid. The design of the Scope 2 framework shapes investment decisions and consumer behavior, and the proposed revisions have implications for decarbonization across the global economy. (Around 97 percent of companies on the S&P 500 voluntarily report their emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, for reference.) The proposed revisions would require emissions to be attributed on a local and hourly basis, rather than on a geographically dispersed and annual basis; electricity consumers that purchase attributes from clean electricity generators would need to buy these attributes from nearby generators around the time at which electricity was consumed. In this webinar, experts on emissions accounting discussed the trade-offs in the proposed revisions and their broader importance for corporate clean energy efforts and the speed of decarbonization. The discussion featured the following experts. Aaron Bergman, Fellow at Resources for the Future Christoph Graf, Senior Economist at the Institute for Policy Integrity (Moderator) Jesse D. Jenkins, Associate Professor at Princeton University and Head of the REPEAT Project Dharik Mallapragada, Assistant Professor at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering (Introduction) Gavin McCormick, Co-Founder and Executive Director of WattTime Christine Pries, Manager of Sustainability at STACK Infrastructure