WRI 2010 Organizational Greenhouse Gas Inventory

WRI’s 2010 inventory revealed emissions of 4,309 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mt CO2e). This is 2.3 times the 2009 inventory of 1,326 mt CO2e. This increase is mainly attributed to the inclusion of scope 3 accounting, based on WRI’s recently published GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard. Previous inventories included emissions from select scope 3 categories (namely business travel and employee commuting), but the 2010 inventory has been expanded to include all relevant scope 3 catego¬ries including purchased goods and services, waste generated in operations, fuel- and other energy-related activities, and end-of-life treatment of sold products. Emissions from these four additional categories account for 67 percent of WRI’s 2010 inventory.

This report also introduces WRI’s new abso¬lute greenhouse gas reduction targets. As the 2010 inventory is WRI’s most comprehensive thus far, 2010 will be used as the base year for our new 2020 emissions reduction targets:

• 50 percent reduction in scope 2 emissions from purchased electricity;
• 20 percent reduction in scope 3 emissions from business travel; and
• 20 percent reduction in all other scope 3 cat¬egories (specifically, purchased goods and services, employee commuting, waste generated in operations, fuel- and other energy-related activities, and end-of-life treat¬ment of sold products).

Finally this report describes examples of WRI’s other sustainability initiative activi¬ties, including our first nitrogen footprint assessment. WRI’s 2009 GHG inventory is included as an appendix in this report, and previous inventory reports can be found in the “Downloads” section above.