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Voluntarily reporting our emissions In 2007, Great River Energy became a founding reporter to The Climate Registry, a non-profit organization established to publicly report greenhouse gas emissions in a common, accurate and transparent manner. Through this program, we voluntarily commit to measuring, independently verifying and publicly reporting our greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis utilizing The Climate Registry General Reporting Protocol. |
Although Great River Energy has been publicly reporting its greenhouse gas emissions since 1995 under other voluntary programs, the scope of emissions is broadened under The Climate Registry protocol. We expect to complete independent verification of our past greenhouse gas emissions by a third-party verifier in late 2009.
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a greenhouse gas that we closely monitor. SF6 has a global warming potential 23,900 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. We recognize our responsibility to reduce emissions of this greenhouse gas. When Great River Energy joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SF6 Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems in 2005, our annual baseline emissions were 3,335 pounds.
We established an aggressive goal to keep these emissions below 1,500 pounds per year. Our goal for 2008 was even more aggressive — not to exceed 1,200 pounds. We are pleased to report that SF6 emissions for 2008 were even lower than our goal, at 1,146.5 pounds.
