ISO WG 5 in Malaysia
ISO Enters International Climate Change Arena
ISO Enters International Climate Change Arena

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) formally stepped into the international climate change arena in June 2002, when it began to develop a new standard on corporate greenhouse gas emissions. ISO Technical Committee 207 established Working Group 5 to create a standard for the "measurement, reporting and verification of entity- and project-level greenhouse gas emissions." The standard is intended to help companies integrate greenhouse gas emissions into their environmental management systems. In addition, depending upon how the standard is written, it may also assist companies in complying with national climate change regulations, participating in voluntary reporting initiatives, or entering emerging greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading markets.

Working Group 5 (WG 5) grew out of a two-year ISO process of following international climate change negotiations to see whether agreements like the Kyoto Protocol will precipitate new needs for international standardization. ISO determined that the Kyoto Protocol and national climate policies will create incentives for companies to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, and that an international standard would facilitate and add consistency to this process.

Approximately 70 participants from about 30 countries took part in three days of WG 5 meetings, led by representatives from Malaysia and Canada. The leadership of WG 5 proposed that the primary model for the new ISO GHG standard be the Greenhouse Gas Protocol developed by the World Resources Initiative (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Additional methodologies under consideration as inputs to the ISO standard include the Global Reporting Initiative, the Australia GHG Challenge guidelines, California's Climate Action Registry, and the UK's Emissions Trading Scheme, among others. WG5's first task is to compare and evaluate these various documents.

WG 5 is working on a tight timeline in order to complete its final product by 2005. Whether that product is an international standard or something less rigorous remains to be decided, as does the extent to which ISO's GHG standard is coordinated with the project-based reporting requirements of Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism and other related GHG initiatives.

To facilitate its work, WG 5 established four Ad Hoc Groups as follows:
Ad Hoc Group Coordinators
1. Entity Measurement USA, Brazil
2. Project Measurement Japan, India
3. Verification UK, Czech Republic
4. Cross-cutting Subjects Germany, ECOLOGIA

Ad Hoc Groups 1-3 are now assembling seed documents relevant to their areas of GHG measurement, identifying relevant on-going initiatives outside of ISO, and compiling existing "best practice" guidance. Ad Hoc Group 4 (AHG4) will facilitate the work of the other AHGs by addressing "cross-cutting subjects" such as general principles, terminology, partnerships and stakeholder engagement. AHG4's partnership/stakeholder tasks and its coordination by ECOLOGIA, an environmental NGO, suggest that WG5 has an interest in creating a standard that has credibility with the international environmental community.


 
Last modified by: H. McGray on 26-Nov-02
 
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