US students tackle corporate America’s greenhouse gas challenge

Ecometrica and George Washington University collaboration gives students top tools for carbon footprint management

Montreal, Edinburgh, June 2018: A new generation of US graduate students will tackle global corporate greenhouse gas emissions using state of the art greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting and reporting software from Ecometrica – in a first for the US education system.

The Ecometrica Platform is now available to students at George Washington University (GWU) in the US capital. The agreement will see budding environmental leaders on the Greenhouse Gas Management Assurance and Information Systems Design course become the first US graduate students to gain free access to Ecometrica’s award-winning Platform.

The course is part of GWU’s Greenhouse Gas Management Certificate program, which was created in collaboration with the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, a non-profit dedicated to building and supporting a global community of greenhouse gas professionals. The program brings together practitioners and higher education to build a community of experts with the highest standards of professional practice in measuring, accounting for, auditing and managing GHG emissions.

Ecometrica contributes critical technology to the program. The Ecometrica Platform’s audit-ready GHG modules were built from the ground up by subject matter experts and allow user to input their activity data, easily calculate GHG emissions, produce GHG emissions reports, and analyze their climate change impacts in order to better manage them.

Professor Jonathan Deason, co-Director, Environmental & Energy Management Institute at George Washington University said: “Thanks to the collaboration with Ecometrica we are giving our students access to a state of the art GHG accounting and reporting tool. We combine the use of the tool with lectures and expert interviews to provide students with hands-on experience and insight on how companies use systems to manage their GHG emissions. The course, supported by Ecometrica’s software, prepares students to make the maximum possible impact once they enter the workforce.”

George Washington University D.C. is the first American university to gain access to Ecometrica’s software for the purposes of training students. It follows the memorandum of understanding signed between Ecometrica and The University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences in 2016, which paved the way for undertaking larger collaborative work with universities.

Vanessa Boudreau-Sannier, Ecometrica’s chief operations officer in North America, who spearheaded the educational community initiative, said: “We are committed to supporting future practitioners and working with leading universities to enhance their knowledge and capabilities using satellite data mapping applications to measure greenhouse gas emissions and wider environmental and climate impacts.

“US businesses have really stepped up their efforts to become environmentally responsible in the last years, and greenhouse gas management-focused courses are emerging in North America partly as a response to that. As carbon reporting continues to get more important for businesses in response to the external and internal pressures dictated by a changing climate, carbon management skills are increasingly in demand.

“We are committed to helping organizations of all sectors manage their environmental impact as effectively, transparently and efficiently as possible, and we hope this community initiative will pave the way to support other US universities, which are training tomorrow’s environmentally responsible business leaders.”