Sept. 5

Posting and beaming

By G. Rendell

So, I’m in the process of submitting Greenback’s baseline greenhouse gas inventory, as called for under the ACUPCC. AASHE has supplied an online tool to use in filing the reports for academic years 2001 through 2007, and it’s pretty straight forward. Even if your school hasn’t (yet) signed the PCC, you can use the same link to see the publicly available reports filed by the schools which have.

From an administrative point of view, there are a couple of minor glitches. The tool asks for emissions from purchased steam separately from those for purchased chilled water. Makes perfect sense, but the most widely used calculator lumps the two in together. Additionally, there seems to be no reporting tool to allow schools easily to verify what they’ve entered before hitting “publish to the world.” (In later years, when we’re posting one year’s data at a time, this may not be a big deal. Right now, when we’re posting seven years of data all at once, it sure would be convenient.)

Still, for a first-time effort (after all, it’s only the charter signatories who have to report their inventory results by 9/15), it’s pretty straightforward. And it feels good, checking off a BIG item on my “to do” list. I’m just hoping that the basic level of functionality and straight-stock user interface will mean that, on 9/15 when every administrator at every charter signatory is trying to get on at the same time, the server(s) don’t run out of gas.

Oops, I mean “sustainably generated electricity".

Comments

Thanks!

Thanks for the review G! I’m glad you are finding the submission tool fairly straightforward.

We are very much intending to improve the tool over time and your suggestion of a preview tool is definitely something we can look into. In the meantime, one thing that may allay your fears a bit is that you can still edit your GHG reports after submitting them publicly. So, if you post one and realize you’ve made a mistake, you can go in and change it at any time.

We struggled with the decision about separating purchased steam from purchased chilled water. We had to choose whether we wanted to be consistent with Clean Air-Cool Planet’s calculator or The Climate Registry’s approach to reporting (which does distinguish between purchased steam and purchased cooling).

The Climate Registry seems to be emerging as the primary standard setter for emissions reporting in North America and it’s our understanding that Clean Air-Cool Planet is working to make future versions of their calculator consistent with TCR’s approach. So, while we realize that it’s a bit of an inconvenience at the moment, we decided it would probably be better over the long term to have them separated the beginning.

Anyway, thanks again for the review!

Julian Dautremont-Smith, Associate Director at AASHE, at 5:30 pm EDT on September 7, 2008