Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program

The Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program established a mechanism by which corporations, government agencies, individuals, voluntary organizations, etc., can report to the EIA, any actions taken that have or are expected to reduce/avoid emissions of greenhouse gases or sequester carbon.

Reporters choose to undertake the effort of preparing their voluntary submissions for a variety of reasons, such as:

* To establish a public record of their contributions to achieving a national policy objective
* To provide the opportunity for others to benefit from their experience in reducing emissions
* To demonstrate their commitment to voluntary approaches to solving or ameliorating environmental conditions
* To record the activities undertaken pursuant to voluntary programs
* To establish a basis for requesting consideration of prior actions in a possible future “credit for early reductions” program or a possible future regulatory scheme to stabilize or reduce national emissions of greenhouse gases.

The data collection forms for the Voluntary Reporting Program, as developed, endeavored to cover the complexity in categories of emissions required by the guidelines. To this end, the structure of the voluntary reporting database needed to be expansible to cover many different contingencies, including the following:

* Reporters ranged from some of the largest industrial firms in the United States to individual households.
* Reporters could report on specific actions (projects) they had taken to reduce emissions or on the emissions (and reductions) of their entire organizations.
* The statute required, and reporters requested, the ability to report on many different classes of actions that have the effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ranging from energy conservation to carbon sequestration.
* The reporting format sought to identify areas where multiple reporting of the same project actually occurred, and to make possible a general assessment of the reliability and possible ownership of the reports.
* The lack of generally accepted accounting principles for greenhouse gas emissions required a design that permitted a variety of reporting formats. This led to ambiguities that the forms design tried to clarify.
* The guidelines permitted the reporting of foreign emission reduction actions.
* The guidelines permitted reporting on reductions for a range of greenhouse gases.
* Managers of voluntary programs asked EIA to develop a mechanism for collecting participants’ commitments to reduce future emissions.

EIA developed two alternative reporting instruments: the long form (Form EIA-1605) and the short form (Form EIA-1605EZ). The short form is intended to cover reporting solely on emission reduction projects and for a single year only.

The current Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program allows reporters considerable flexibility in the scope and content of their reports. As a result, companies can report their emissions and reductions in several different ways, and potentially more than one reporter can claim the same reduction. Some commentators on the program have characterized this aspect as a defect: a problem needing a solution. A more restrictive program, however, could limit the number of entities reporting, as well as the types of activities reported. Therefore, because it tends to increase participation in voluntary reporting, flexibility can be viewed as a useful attribute of the program for the following reasons:

* The educational and public recognition aspects of the program are enhanced by maximizing the participation and do not necessarily require a complete and fully-defined system of property rights to a reported emission reduction.
* The Voluntary Reporting Program can be viewed as a survey of emission accounting methods and theories actually in use, and a set of illustrations of the potential accounting and baseline problems that must be confronted in designing future policy instruments. A more structured approach might have been less useful for identifying and analyzing these emissions accounting issues.
* The Voluntary Reporting database illustrates the range and diversity of concrete actions that firms can undertake to limit greenhouse gas emissions, including many not imagined by the designers of the program. A more structured approach might have excluded some of the more original and innovative projects reported to the program.

The Department of Energy decided not to require verification by an independent third party after considering this issue during the development of the guidelines for the Voluntary Reporting Program. However, reporters must certify the accuracy of their 1605(b) reports.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed a multilateral treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which committed the United States to take steps, in conjunction with other signatory states, to “. . . achieve . . . stabilization of the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

On April 21, 1993 (Earth Day), President Clinton committed the United States to stabilizing its emissions of greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by the year 2000.