ASTM E2725-19

4.2.1 Small businesses or enterprises;

4.2.2 Service industries;

4.2.3 Federal, state or municipal facilities and regulators, including departments of health and fire departments;

4.2.4 Financial and insurance institutions;

4.2.5 Waste managers, including liquid and solid waste haulers, treatment, recycling, disposal and transfer;

4.2.6 Consultants, auditors, inspectors and compliance assistance personnel;

4.2.7 Educational facilities;

4.2.8 Property, buildings and grounds management, including landscaping;

4.2.9 Non-regulatory government agencies, such as the military.

4.3.1 This guide presents basic principles and strategies in the U.S. for conducting baseline assessment and reasonable mitigation/adaptation strategic options on a corporate, or small business voluntary basis. The following principals apply to this priority system:

4.3.2 Ability to set specific GHG goals for activities. These goals may include maintaining existing outputs of GHG while increasing a facility’s operations, or reducing GHG through engineering changes while maintaining current operations.

4.3.3 Marketing environmental awareness and sensitivity;

4.3.4 Assessing risks from future GHG events;

4.3.5 Risk management, underwriting; loss control and history; premiums and claims;

4.3.6 Liability assessment and qualifications for loans;

4.3.7 Standardization, consistency, and certification of facility specific evaluations;

4.3.8 Educating employees, clients, and customers;

4.3.9 Generating multi media and cross medium information;

4.3.10 Evaluating vendors, and

4.3.11 Reducing costs and preventing pollution.

4.4.1 This guide is a basic primer on GHG impacts and may serve to introduce the subject for organizations unfamiliar with the principles.

4.4.2 Some government enforcement agencies, fiduciaries and business organizations publish GHG strategies. Over 400 municipalities in the United States, for example, have signed the principles of international standards to address GHGs. The public has systematic ability to access or estimate information on individual businesses. Therefore, businesses need guidance on how to assess the nature and potential risks of GHGs, and a programmatic approach for reducing or eliminating those risks through energy conservation, pollution prevention, alternative and emerging technologies and other proactive management systems.

4.4.3 Reduced operation and maintenance costs may be realized through a tiered evaluation of GHG response opportunities.

4.4.4 Responses may be streamlined and simplified so that all levels in an organization may participate.

4.4.5 Some enterprises may be more competitive in the marketplace with improved GHG response programs.

4.4.6 Setting priorities can allow planning and evaluation of new GHG response requirements.

4.5.1 The Carbon Tax.

4.5.2 Cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

4.6.1 There is little doubt at the international level that greenhouse gases will continue to be regulated. However, there are still important questions regarding how large and how fast these regulatory changes will be implemented, and what effects they will have in different regions. The ability to predict future global levels of GHGs has improved, but efforts to understand the impacts of GHGs on society and analyze mitigation and adaptation strategies are still relatively immature.

4.6.2 The tiered analysis in this guide will help support decision-making, studying regional impacts, and communicating with wider group of stakeholders in the face of uncertainty.

4.6.3 The insurance industry has always played a role by insuring against weather-related risks, promoting stronger building codes, and better land-use decision-making.

4.6.4 Many GHG regulatory schemes require documentation and validation of baseline greenhouse gas production. Standard techniques are contained in ISO 14064–1, ISO 14064–2, ISO 14064–3: 2006-03-01, and in ISO 14065.

1.2.1 The guide also provides some high-level options for the monitoring, tracking and performance to evaluate the effectiveness of the commercial entity’s strategy to ensure that a reasonable approach is taken.

1.2.2 This standard ties into the ASTM Committee E50 standards series related to environmental risk assessment and management.

1.3.1 The guide provides a three-tiered decision strategy that focuses on business risk, cost-effective solutions in response to greenhouse gases, and related issues such as the need for energy independence.

1.4.1 Insurance Industry—The effects of GHG on insurers are not clear. The definition of an insurable occurrence and a commencement point for when insurable claims are made, along with when conditions were discovered and the actionable information leading to an insurable loss is not clear. It may be inappropriate to speculate on GHGs that are highly uncertain for purposes of insurance related to specific events.

1.4.2 This guide does not take a position on the science of climate change, its association with anthropogenic greenhouse gases, or various mathematical models generated by international bodies.

1.4.3 The guide does not address water vapor as a greenhouse gas.

1.4.4 The guide only addresses anthropogenic greenhouse gases.