On Wednesday the US Securities and Exchange Commission voted to provide public companies with interpretive guidance on existing SEC disclosure requirements as they apply to business or legal developments relating to the issue of climate change.

The guidance highlights 4 key points:

• Impact of Legislation and Regulation: A company should consider whether the impact of certain existing laws and regulations regarding climate change is material. In certain circumstances, a company should also evaluate the potential impact of pending legislation and regulation related to this topic.
• Impact of International Accords: A company should consider, and disclose when material, the risks or effects on its business of international accords and treaties relating to climate change.
• Indirect Consequences of Regulation or Business Trends: Legal, technological, political and scientific developments regarding climate change may create new opportunities or risks for companies. For instance, a company may face decreased demand for goods that produce significant greenhouse gas emissions or increased demand for goods that result in lower emissions than competing products. As such, a company should consider, for disclosure purposes, the actual or potential indirect consequences it may face due to climate change related regulatory or business trends.
• Physical Impacts of Climate Change: Companies should also evaluate for disclosure purposes the actual and potential material impacts of environmental matters on their business.

The announcement on SEC's guidance on disclosure of climate change risks.

Over the Christmas break we added the ability to further categorise emission sources, facilities and assets in FoundationFootprint™ through the use of "tags".

In the same way that blog posts are tagged or labelled, resources and production items and organisation and facility items can be classified with as many different tags as desired.

For example, you may wish to tag facilities that come under the mandatory reporting requirements of regional or national regulations or that have recently had energy audits performed there.

You may wish to tag electricity accounts with more information than just whether they're time of use or none time of use accounts. For example whether they have data provided by smart meters or include a break down of usage data at the asset level.

Tags are also made available in reports where appropriate.

Tags are over and above the existing three levels of classifications already available to inventory and organsiation items as well as other labels such as emission scopes and types.

Tags provide for a limitless level of catogorisation on almost every aspect of your data in FoundationFootprint™.