有些词汇体现了各种因素的协同效应,有些总结了经验教训。今年,公司领导者在财报电话会议中反复提及一个新词:范围三排放。
范围三排放被用来代表因非公司直接所有或直接控制的实体的经营活动所产生的碳排放。例如一个生产公司采购和交付的产品所产生的排放就属于范围三排放。这类排放在该公司的碳足迹中占很大一部分。
据财务数据公司Sentieo统计,今年到目前为止,有689份公司季度财报电话会议和投资者会议的文稿中至少提到一次范围三排放。Sentieo研究总监尼克·马辛告诉《财富》杂志,这一数字比2019年的47次增加了15倍。
思科(Cisco)CEO罗卓克在11月份召开的公司财报电话会议中表示:“我们在9月承诺2025年前实现范围一和范围二净零温室气体排放,2040年前实现全面净零排放,包括范围三排放。”
马辛表示,公司活动现在经常用范围三排放指代“碳排放”。随着越来越多公司开始公布其环境影响,“范围三排放”和“碳排放”这两个术语实际上已经变成可以互换。
马辛表示,提及范围三排放的大部分是公司的管理层,而不是华尔街的分析师,因为他们经常只负责听报告和提问题。他发现,公司管理层提及范围三排放的次数是分析师或投资者的六倍。
上市公司经常会估算其环境影响并介绍公司为减少环境影响所做的努力,但实际上这并非强制规定,而且他们的估算往往很难进行事实核查。有些公司可以言之凿凿地宣称其消费了多少加仑汽油,例如快递业巨头UPS,但直接面向消费者的企业却很难评估其碳排放量,比如销售家用户外烧烤架的公司。
范围一和范围二排放用于测算公司经营产生的直接排放,非盈利组织世界资源研究所(World Resources Institute)和世界企业永续发展委员会(World Business Council for Sustainable Development)在2001年提出了这三个用于说明碳排放的术语。
但事实证明,间接排放的测算比直接排放更加困难。哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)荣誉教授罗伯特·S·卡普兰和牛津大学(Oxford University)布拉瓦尼克政治学院(Blavatnik School of Government)的卡西克·拉马纳在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)中写道,公司“基本上不可能可靠估算其范围三排放。”
除了范围三排放以外,第三季度的其他商务热词还包括“通货膨胀”、“瓶颈”、“劳动力短缺”、“净零排放”(另外一个表示抵消碳排放的术语)和“基础设施法案”等。这些术语体现了美国当前的政治环境以及因为新冠疫情等原因导致的供应链混乱和劳动市场问题。(财富中文网)
翻译:刘进龙
审校:汪皓
有些词汇体现了各种因素的协同效应,有些总结了经验教训。今年,公司领导者在财报电话会议中反复提及一个新词:范围三排放。
范围三排放被用来代表因非公司直接所有或直接控制的实体的经营活动所产生的碳排放。例如一个生产公司采购和交付的产品所产生的排放就属于范围三排放。这类排放在该公司的碳足迹中占很大一部分。
据财务数据公司Sentieo统计,今年到目前为止,有689份公司季度财报电话会议和投资者会议的文稿中至少提到一次范围三排放。Sentieo研究总监尼克·马辛告诉《财富》杂志,这一数字比2019年的47次增加了15倍。
思科(Cisco)CEO罗卓克在11月份召开的公司财报电话会议中表示:“我们在9月承诺2025年前实现范围一和范围二净零温室气体排放,2040年前实现全面净零排放,包括范围三排放。”
马辛表示,公司活动现在经常用范围三排放指代“碳排放”。随着越来越多公司开始公布其环境影响,“范围三排放”和“碳排放”这两个术语实际上已经变成可以互换。
马辛表示,提及范围三排放的大部分是公司的管理层,而不是华尔街的分析师,因为他们经常只负责听报告和提问题。他发现,公司管理层提及范围三排放的次数是分析师或投资者的六倍。
上市公司经常会估算其环境影响并介绍公司为减少环境影响所做的努力,但实际上这并非强制规定,而且他们的估算往往很难进行事实核查。有些公司可以言之凿凿地宣称其消费了多少加仑汽油,例如快递业巨头UPS,但直接面向消费者的企业却很难评估其碳排放量,比如销售家用户外烧烤架的公司。
范围一和范围二排放用于测算公司经营产生的直接排放,非盈利组织世界资源研究所(World Resources Institute)和世界企业永续发展委员会(World Business Council for Sustainable Development)在2001年提出了这三个用于说明碳排放的术语。
但事实证明,间接排放的测算比直接排放更加困难。哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)荣誉教授罗伯特·S·卡普兰和牛津大学(Oxford University)布拉瓦尼克政治学院(Blavatnik School of Government)的卡西克·拉马纳在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)中写道,公司“基本上不可能可靠估算其范围三排放。”
除了范围三排放以外,第三季度的其他商务热词还包括“通货膨胀”、“瓶颈”、“劳动力短缺”、“净零排放”(另外一个表示抵消碳排放的术语)和“基础设施法案”等。这些术语体现了美国当前的政治环境以及因为新冠疫情等原因导致的供应链混乱和劳动市场问题。(财富中文网)
翻译:刘进龙
审校:汪皓
First there was synergy, then there were learnings. This year, corporate bigwigs have a new buzzword they’re repeating in earnings calls: Scope 3.
The term is shorthand for a company's carbon emissions that are the result of activities by entities that aren't directly owned or controlled by that business. These emissions, such as from the production of goods they buy and their delivery, tend to make up the bulk of an organization's total carbon footprint.
Scope 3 was mentioned at least once in 689 transcripts of quarterly earnings calls and investor conferences so far this year, according to financial data firm Sentieo. That’s a 15-fold increase from 2019, when there were 47 mentions, Nick Mazing, director of research for Sentieo, told Fortune.
"In September, we committed to being net zero greenhouse gas emissions for Scope 1 and 2 by 2025, and net zero for all emissions, including scope 3 by 2040," said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins during his company's earnings call in November.
Scope 3, Mazing said, is now used as frequently during corporate events as “carbon emissions.” As businesses increasingly report on their environmental impact, "Scope 3" and "carbon emissions" have essentially become interchangeable.
Management have mostly been the ones who've used Scope 3, not the Wall Street analysts who often listen and ask questions, Mazing said. Management mentioned the term six times for every one time an analyst or investor did, he found.
While public companies often estimate their environmental impact and discuss what they’re doing to mitigate it, they're not required to do so and their estimates are often difficult to fact-check, said Mazing. While a company like delivery giant UPS may be able to say with near-certainty how many gallons of gasoline it uses, consumer-facing businesses, like a company that sells backyard grills, have trouble evaluating their emissions.
Like Scope 1 and Scope 2, which measure direct emissions from a company's operations, Scope 3, as a term, was created in 2001 by the non-profit groups World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to describe carbon use.
But measuring indirect emissions has proven to be much more difficult than for direct emissions. It is "virtually impossible for a company to reliably estimate its Scope 3 numbers," wrote Robert S. Kaplan, emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, and Karthik Ramanna of Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government in the Harvard Business Review.
Following Scope 3 on the list of most-used business buzzwords in third-quarter corporate transcripts were the terms ‘inflation’, ‘bottlenecks’, ‘labor shortages’, ‘net zero’ (another term meant to denote the offsetting of carbon emissions), and ‘infrastructure bill.’ Those terms reflect the current political climate in Washington D.C. and supply chain kinks and labor market problems created in part by the COVID-19 pandemic.