Enhancing Firm GHG Reporting: Using Index Numbers to Report Corporate Level Measures of Sustainability

Abstract

A growing number of companies report changes in energy use or other measures of " sustainability " on an intensity basis. However, when the mix of products produced is changing it is hard to tell if a change in intensity is due to efficiency or simply changes in the types of products they produce. This article draws a parallel between the problem of corporate reporting of sustainability and the empirical application of index decomposition analysis (IDA) of trends in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. While a variety of index numbers have been proposed by this literature, this paper presents one, the Fisher index, as a good choice and leaves the application of other index numbers in the literature to the reader. An example using real world data from the seven divisions of a large, energy intensive company, Corning, is presented.