Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast

Andrew Griffiths - Director of Policy and Corporate Development at Planet Mark, Co-Founder of Carbon Accounting Alliance

Andrew Griffiths is Director of Policy and Partnerships at Planet Mark, a sustainability certification that supports organisations and real estate to measure and continually reduce carbon emissions and increase their social value. Andrew co-founded the Carbon Accounting Alliance (CAA) representing 300+ organisations in the industry. He also sits on Advisory Boards, Councils and Committees for the Institute of Directors (IoD), BSI Greenhouse Gas Management Standards, and UK-Government backed initiatives like UK Business Climate Hub and Project Perseus. Having delivered a TEDx talk on the power of meaningful networking, he is a big believer in the power of communication and how it can be used to drive climate action. Andrew Joins the Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast to Discuss: * Objectives of the Carbon Accounting Alliance (CAA) * Ensuring consistency in carbon accounting methodologies * Professionalization of the sector * Engagement with policymakers and standard setters * Public vs proprietary emission factors Andrew's Listener Takeaway: If there's only one thing that our guests take away from this conversation, what do you think it should be? If you're in carbon accounting, play nicely with everyone else. Come and play nicely with everyone else. If you're not in carbon accounting, it's an interesting question if this isn't a relevant sphere for you. I think the climate crisis requires radical collaboration. Carbon accountants have one role to play in this journey, but literally every other profession has its role to play. If there isn't an industry forum or a professional forum bringing together people within your area of specialty and expertise, whether that is you are an artist, you are an engineer, you are a logistics company, you are a waste company, whatever it might be, if you don't have some form of forum bringing you together with your peers to collectively solve the biggest, most challenging problems that you're facing, do it. There are going to be some really naughty problems that are going to take massive collaboration to solve.There are classic examples of that for things like green steel. Steel manufacturers, many of them are now getting together. They're pooling resources and money together to invest in trying to evolve technologies, because none of them have the budgets to do it independently and come up with some magical solution. They've come together to try to do stuff. We have to see that in more places and in more sectors and in more industries. So find your allies, that's the overall takeaway that is true for everyone. If you're a carbon accountant, hopefully we can help signpost a whole bunch of those to you. We now have over a thousand people at the alliance. We've got 570 member organizations, but over a thousand people. Plenty of allies for you there. If those aren't your allies, find them within your business. There will be allies in different professions, different specialties. One of the first things I encourage people within companies to do is just go and start talking to people, because you will find that there are people who care about this just as much as you do, and you can form a rebel alliance inside your business. I've seen so many examples of grassroots activations inside businesses causing quite big companies to have to up their game in sustainability, because the staff are demanding it. They're coming and going, we've got a proposal, we want to become a B Corp, we want to measure our carbon footprint, we want to have a net zero target. If a big enough group of you get together and say that to your board, they're going to struggle to ignore you for very long because they don't want to lose you, you have power, and there's power in numbers. There's power in coming together. Find your allies. Timestamps: 04:47 Collaborative Climate Crisis Solutions 08:13 Collaborative Carbon Measurement Initiative 09:49 Collective Action for Regulatory Change 15:08 Ensuring Robust Carbon Footprint Standards 20:38 Creating a Carbon Accounting Register 25:51 Global Sustainability Updates: Knowledge Sharing 27:47 UK Carbon Reporting Consultation Feedback 33:28 Open Carbon Data Collaboration 35:33 Granular Data for Carbon Reduction 41:06 Advocating Open Source for Emission Data 45:00 Transparent Collaboration in Safe Spaces 46:21 Carbon Accounting: Art and Science 50:44 Radical Collaboration Across Professions

Anthony Hickling - Executive Director at Carbon Leadership Forum

Anthony Hickling has experience in environmental and social sustainability as well as nonprofit management and fundraising. His foundations in sustainable building are informed by experience at Presidio Graduate School where he received an MBA in Sustainable Solutions, as well as his work on the sustainability team at Webcor Builders in San Francisco. Through academic and professional experience he has learned to navigate the priorities of traditional business stakeholders while incorporating social and environmental externalities. From executing successful marketing plans to determining research priorities, Anthony believes that wide impact considerations and diversity of thought should be embedded into all decision-making. Anthony's Joins the Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast to Discuss: * What embodied carbon is and why is it important * The role of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in making informed material choices. * The EC3 (embodied carbon and construction calculator) tool: what it does and how it can be utilized * The need for collaboration among building owners, developers, engineers, architects, and contractors Anthyony's Listener Takeaway: If there's only one thing that our guests take away from this conversation, what do you think it should be? Talk about embodied carbon. Everybody has a different role to play, if you're a public company or a small company, or if you're a contractor or an architect, this has an impact on many different levels of your total carbon emissions within the scope that you control. It's really important that everybody is both aware of this impact, but then also asking for decision makers to be playing a role in reducing embodied carbon. So talk about it. Ask for environmental product declarations. Ask your designers what their plans are to incorporate embodied carbon reductions in their designs. I think that right now, that's really what we need to make sure that this is scaling as a regular approach to how we design and build. Timestamps: 03:56 Neglected carbon impacts in the built environment. 08:51 Including carbon in building design decisions. 10:10 Tools to help reduce building design's environmental impact. 16:41 Contributing to reducing embodied carbon impact. 17:44 Prioritizing reducing embodied carbon in projects. 22:49 California's policies reducing embodied carbon emissions. 24:10 California requiring construction emissions reductions for large projects. 28:55 Requesting data to encourage suppliers to prioritize accessibility. 34:23 Addressing embodied carbon reduction collaboratively.

Michael Gillenwater (Part 2) - Co-founder, Dean and Executive Director at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute

Dr. Gillenwater is a co-founder, Executive Director, and Dean of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, a non-profit organization with the unique mission to train and professionalize a global community of experts for measuring, verifying, and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Michael is a thought leader on GHG measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), carbon offsets, additionality, green power, international capacity building, and environmental accounting. He has dedicated his career to professional and international development, focusing on the infrastructure needed to produce highly credible environmental information that can serve as the basis of effective climate policies. Beyond guiding the Institute's strategy and programming, Michael also directs its research program and curriculum development. He is a four time lead author for the IPCC and contributor to its 2007 Nobel Peace Price. He has been actively engaged in the work of the UNFCCC process for 25 years, including the training of compliance experts for the Kyoto Protocol. He has been a core advisor and contributing author to the WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol. At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Michael was lead author of the official U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for its first 7 years. He also served on the U.S. negotiating team to the UNFCCC Conference of Parties. Michael founded and serves as a co-Editor in Chief for the peer reviewed journal Carbon Management published by Tyler & Francis. He is also an active research scholar on GHG accounting and climate policy topics, having been widely published in peer-reviewed journals and quoted by the media. Dr. Gillenwater completed his PhD at the Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy Program at Princeton University, where his research was on the economics of renewable energy and emission markets and design of environmental commodities. He has three master's degrees: i) environmental engineering, ii) technology policy, both from MIT, and iii) evolutionary systems from the University of Sussex where he was a Fulbright scholar. His bachelors is in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University. Michael Joins the Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast to Discuss: * Recommendations for defining boundaries * Best practices for disclosures without impacting competitive advantages * Advice for showing consistency over time when more accurate methods of collecting data appear Michael's Listener Takeaway: If there's only one thing that our guests take away from this conversation, what do you think it should be? Don't assume how we think about and how we do corporate GHG reporting now is the way it should be or will continue to be like. Especially going into the next couple years, open your mind to potential new ways of approaching this question. Start asking yourself and others: why are we doing this, what are specific use cases? Dive deeper into the specific use cases, not just for the inventory data now, but what you can imagine you might want to use the data for in the future. Start the thought process of being open to new ways of thinking.Maybe there isn't one corporate inventory. Maybe there's different ways of reporting for different purposes. Learn more about the work being done at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute at ghgmi.org. Timstamps: 04:02 Scope three emissions reporting challenges. 10:58 Ensuring credibility requirces more than ransparency and auditing. 18:35 IPCC guidelines for detailed inventory issue guidance. 26:30 Listener takeaway and closing questions.

Michael Gillenwater (Part 1) - Co-founder, Dean and Executive Director at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute

Dr. Gillenwater is a co-founder, Executive Director, and Dean of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, a non-profit organization with the unique mission to train and professionalize a global community of experts for measuring, verifying, and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Michael is a thought leader on GHG measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), carbon offsets, additionality, green power, international capacity building, and environmental accounting. He has dedicated his career to professional and international development, focusing on the infrastructure needed to produce highly credible environmental information that can serve as the basis of effective climate policies. Beyond guiding the Institute's strategy and programming, Michael also directs its research program and curriculum development. He is a four time lead author for the IPCC and contributor to its 2007 Nobel Peace Price. He has been actively engaged in the work of the UNFCCC process for 25 years, including the training of compliance experts for the Kyoto Protocol. He has been a core advisor and contributing author to the WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol. At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Michael was lead author of the official U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for its first 7 years. He also served on the U.S. negotiating team to the UNFCCC Conference of Parties. Michael founded and serves as a co-Editor in Chief for the peer reviewed journal Carbon Management published by Tyler & Francis. He is also an active research scholar on GHG accounting and climate policy topics, having been widely published in peer-reviewed journals and quoted by the media. Dr. Gillenwater completed his PhD at the Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy Program at Princeton University, where his research was on the economics of renewable energy and emission markets and design of environmental commodities. He has three master's degrees: i) environmental engineering, ii) technology policy, both from MIT, and iii) evolutionary systems from the University of Sussex where he was a Fulbright scholar. His bachelors is in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University. Michael Joins the Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast to Discuss: * How to determine who would be the best fit within an organization to conduct an GHG inventory * Spend based emission factors and where to find reputable sources * TACCC Principals for GHG inventories Michael's Listener Takeaway: If there's only one thing that our guests take away from this conversation, what do you think it should be? Don't assume how we think about and how we do corporate GHG reporting now is the way it should be or will continue to be like. Especially going into the next couple years, open your mind to potential new ways of approaching this question. Start asking yourself and others: why are we doing this, what are specific use cases? Dive deeper into the specific use cases, not just for the inventory data now, but what you can imagine you might want to use the data for in the future. Start the thought process of being open to new ways of thinking.Maybe there isn't one corporate inventory. Maybe there's different ways of reporting for different purposes. Learn more about the work being done at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute at ghgmi.org. Timestamps: 08:50 Engineering skills for understanding environmental systems processes. 12:48 Reliance on default factors limiting accurate emissions tracking. 16:12 Expansive lifecycle assessments offering emission source insights. 19:42 GHC protocol website for resource options. 23:07 Importance of transparency for environmental treaty compliance. 25:32 Corporate reporting not designed for company comparisons.

Welcome to The Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast

Welcome to The Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast, presented by North Star Carbon Management. I'm your host, Chris Barzman. Whether you're tackling the carbon footprint of a multinational corporation or a small business, this podcast is your go-to resource for all things carbon management. As someone who has been in the trenches of environmental management for over a decade, I've witnessed the evolution of the industry and the growing urgency for actionable and effective carbon strategies. Throughout this podcast series, you'll gain insights from leading experts in the field, hear about the latest innovations in technology, and learn about the regulatory changes that could impact your business. Having completed numerous carbon inventories for both small and large businesses across various industries, I understand the complexities and challenges of accurately measuring, reporting, and reducing carbon emissions. More importantly, I also realize that many people tasked with leading an organizations' carbon management plan don't have a strong background in this area and are always looking for easy to absorb information that fits into their already busy schedules, hence the decision to create this podcast. In e ach episode, we'll dive deep into critical topics such as emerging trends in carbon accounting, how to navigate the challenges of data collection and analysis, and the best practices for sustainable carbon management. We'll provide you with actionable tips, detailed case studies, and thoughtful commentary to help you not just meet, but exceed your environmental targets. We're here to empower you with knowledge and tools that will not only enhance your professional capabilities but also contribute to your organization's sustainability goals. Our mission is to foster a community of professionals who are equipped to take on environmental challenges with confidence and foresight. We do really want to incorporate listener feedback along the way, so please be sure to comment on episodes or reach out to us directly at podcast@northstarcarbon.com. We are always looking for ways to improve and find new and interesting topics to share and discuss. Please make sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and share it with others that might also be interested. Stay connected with us through our website at www.northstarcarbon.com and follow us on LinkedIn for updates and more tips and ideas. On behalf of myself, your host Chris Barzman and the entire North Star Carbon Management team, thank you for investing your time with us and we look forward to serving our listener community!