Greenpeace, not known for their subtle arts of persuasion, has launched a no-holds-barred campaign that “encourages” tech leaders to reduce their carbon footprint.  Apparently, the IT sector has the capacity to reduce carbon emissions 15% below baseline through technologies like smart buildings and smart grids.  The Greenpeace site aims to shame leaders into doing their part.

As a proponent of helpful ecometrics, I have to question the CEO scorecard Greenpeace has chosen.  While metrics like “Renewable Energy Use” are tractable and easily compared, their “Political Advocacy” and “Public Climate Speech” categories seem subjective at best.  Both leaders get dinged because they haven’t mentioned Kyoto or Copenhagen targets, and the scoring guidelines give points to leaders who “push for the specific level of mandatory cuts required globally or in the relevant country.”  But does mentioning a target equate to pushing?  This isn’t clear in their rules.

The majority of points (50) are given for providing “Climate Solutions” and here they deserve credit for taking a cogent look at reporting standards.  They clearly define their targets: ”

• Provide calculation of current net GHG emissions by solutions provided by company to other parts of the economy and make this information public. Maximum = 25 points.
  
• Provide explanation of metric used to calculate net GHG emissions reductions of solutions and make this information public. Companies must provide a comprehensive metric reflecting current best practice in the industry. Moving forward Greenpeace would like to see the industry develop a standard protocol for net emissions reductions similar to the current GHG protocol standard. Maximum = 15 points.
  
• Ambitious target for net GHG emissions by solutions provided across the economy by 2012. Maximum =10 points.
  
• A company’s leadership on global GHG emission reductions and the public advocacy work it undertakes to influence politicians on the need for strong global emissions reduction targets in the second implementation phase of the Kyoto Protocol, due to start in 2012, but being negotiated this year, culminating in final positions at the Climate Change Negotiations in Copenhagen in December.”

Well, 2 out of 4 isn’t bad.  Unfortunately, we don’t know what “ambitious targets” are, nor how to measure “leadership on global GHG emission reductions.”

It will be interesting to see if the CEO’s respond…

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