The Key to Cementing Biden’s Climate Legacy
Voters, especially young voters, care about climate change, and President Biden has taken notice. On his first day in office, Biden reinstated the United States into the Paris Climate Agreement. Fast forward to this year’s State of the Union, and the president touted his goal to cut the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030. In between, of course, the Administration took numerous steps toward advancing clean energy, the most impactful of which was the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in the US clean energy economy in history. But with the presidency, not to mention his legacy, on the line, Biden now has an opportunity to fully cement his climate position by taking on the source of emissions no one wants to touch – the supply chain.
Known as Scope 3, supply chain emissions have been neglected by the net zero movement for some time. For context, emissions are categorized into three different “Scopes.”
Scope 1 emissions come directly from an organization’s operations (gas from company vehicles or combustion from an onsite factory, etc.). Scope 2 emissions are one step removed from 1, including waste generation, emissions emitted from electricity used on-site, and employee commutes. Scope 3 emissions are indirect. They span the value chain and include everything from leased assets, to embodied carbon from construction, to franchises, to building maintenance, renovation, and disposal. As expected, Scope 3 usually makes up a majority of an entity’s emissions, but as a society, we do a horrible job tracking them.
This is an egregious oversight from the net zero movement and arguably the biggest source of greenwashing accusations. Neglecting Scope 3 creates an incomplete picture of an organization’s impact on the environment. In the past, the public and private sectors have faced an uphill battle tracking Scope 3, as it’s been painted as a timely, resource-heavy endeavor. While that may have been true ten years ago, technology and techniques available now have made it easier than ever to both measure and reduce supply chain emissions.
The increasingly climate-conscious marketplace is ripe with sustainable providers of goods and services with which companies can identify and partner with. ESG platforms can then help organizations outline criteria, select suppliers, and conduct audits. Environmental certifications like ENERGY STAR, FSCI, and SFI also help distinguish which products are most climate-friendly.
Tools and strategies are also readily deployable for tracking construction emissions for owned assets. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools provide systematic approaches to evaluate all four stages of a building’s life, from how its raw materials are procured and processed, to repair and maintenance, to eventual demolition and materials disposal. A good LCA works as a net zero guide for resource efficiency, lowering emissions during production, materials use, disposal, supplier selection, materials disassembly, recycling, and waste processing. With today’s tools, technology, and knowledge, there’s no excuse not to track and reduce emissions throughout all reaches of a business. The White House should recognize this, and it has the perfect opportunity to do so by updating existing frameworks.
The Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office (BTO) just closed its request for information on a draft National Definition for a Zero Emissions Building. The current version doesn’t include Scope 3 emissions, but states that “future parts of this definition will likely include embodied carbon, refrigerant, and other key elements.” Merely acknowledging embodied carbon is not enough; it’s a Scope 3 category crucial to determining the actual climate impact of an asset, without which most harmful emissions go uncounted. The manufacturing, materials, and transport required to build a structure make up at least 11% of its lifetime emissions, not a small amount when compared to the actual time spent on construction versus operation.
This administration simply can’t afford to punt Scope 3 accountability to the next generation. By adding embodied carbon to the final version of the Zero Buildings Definition, President Biden will make a radical impact on the emissions measurements process as we know it, and commence the important standard of tracking Scope 3 for environmental reporting. This would create a path to address the most pollutant-heavy portions of our economy, no doubt silencing the president’s climate naysayers. The inclusion of Scope 3 in official guidance would solidify the climate legacy President Biden began with the Inflation Reduction Act, cementing his international impact for many years to come.
Mahesh Ramanujam, is President & CEO of the Global Network for Zero and former CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council.