The Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA announced it will launch a new project to study current methods that quantify and measure carbon emissions, and investigate the potential for new methods to create greater accountability and carbon emissions reductions across full product life cycles and major sectors of the economy.

The project will be led by Dr. Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, with engagement and input from key stakeholders representing environmental groups, industry, academia, and data and accounting firms. The project will focus on calculating the environmental benefits of products and technologies that reduce or eliminate harmful greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, as well as developing new tools for decision-makers to accelerate global progress towards 2030 and 2050 emissions targets.

“As we work to address the urgency of our climate crisis, we need to continue to raise our standards for tracking emissions and encourage new solutions for reducing and eliminating them altogether. This project leverages Columbia University’s broad and multidisciplinary expertise related to energy systems and decarbonization, as well as our convening power to bring diverse perspectives to the conversation,” said Jason Bordoff, Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Standards developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development are the most comprehensive and widely-used global standard for companies to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The Corporate Value Chain Scope 3 standard measures indirect emissions that result from activities and assets not controlled or owned by the reporting organization across its value chain. This project will study and build on existing methodologies to account for value chain emissions reduced or eliminated by innovative products and services, including the role that materials and sustainable applications can play in achieving emissions reductions.

“To solve the climate crisis, we need to be fiercely numerate about the challenges we face, and that includes improving how we track carbon as it is produced, transformed, and used worldwide. This project could create new tools that can be used to speed our transition to a net-zero world by helping governments, businesses, and environmental groups track emissions and reward innovation,” said Dr. Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at CGEP who leads the Center’s Carbon Management Research Initiative.