Study casts doubt on corporate contributions to fight against climate change
Global News
Companies touting their use of renewable energy may be overstating their contributions to the fight against climate change, new research suggests.
Companies touting their use of renewable energy may be overstating their contributions to the fight against climate change, new research suggests.
“There’s a big role for scrutiny of companies’ claims about use of renewables,” said Anders Bjorn, a researcher at Montreal’s Concordia University School of Management who just published a study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The paper examines how businesses increasingly report on their efforts to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit.
One of the common ways for companies to try and reduce their carbon footprint is to “buy” a certain amount of energy from a green producer. Although the power they consume still comes from the grid, the companies get a renewable energy certificate they can apply against their actual emissions.
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The hope was that demand for those certificates would increase their value and encourage the growth of renewable power. But did it?
“In most cases, it has not happened,” Bjorn said.
Previous research has shown that the certificates add, at most, less than five per cent to the price of the power — not enough of a premium to drive investment and increase renewable generation.
