Financial consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has released a practical guide to mandatory carbon reporting based on a fictitious company, 'Typico plc'.
The guide provides a reporting model for business climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. It illustrates the strategy, targets, performance, and benchmarking of how the company is working to reduce its impact on and adapt to climate change and includes an independent assurance report and an example summary report.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is expected to reveal its final guidelines for carbon reporting in October this year and Paul Rew, partner, sustainability & climate change assurance at PwC, said: “Expected reporting guidelines must balance simplicity, so as not to burden business further, with presenting the information in a way that it is valuable and comparable with others.
“Typico plc sets out a flexible template to help companies develop and define good reporting practices for their business.
“While there is no one-size fits all solution, there are elements of Typico plc’s activities that all companies will recognise when reporting their strategy and performance in managing the impacts of climate change on their business.”
The UK government has pledged to reduce carbon emissions here by 80 per cent by 2050. The largest energy and industrial firms already have to report their carbon emissions with an increasing number of firms set to be bound to do so over the next few years.
This guide is part of PwC’s contribution to the work of the Confederation of British Industry’s Carbon Reporting Group.
Earlier this month the CBI recommended one single standard, based on the European Greenhouse Gas Protocol, for all businesses and organisations to adhere to when reporting carbon emissions. This would replace six voluntary codes which currently exist in a system which makes comparisons impossible, according to the CBI.
The Typico plc guide is available for download by clicking here.
PwC was last week recognised for outstanding environmental performance at the Sunday Times Best Green Companies Awards.
