Accounting firms looking at carbon and climate change accounting

The New York Times recently looked at how the Big 4 are looking to get into a new type of accounting by building carbon and climate change shops in the US. This new industry could eventually be large, rivaling the likes of the tax compliance and financial disclosure accounting sectors. In Europe, the Big Four, which consists of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, are already well known for their carbon footprint accounting. These executives are now switching offices and moving back to the United States.

Eric Hespenheide, global managing partner of internal audit services at Deloitte and one of the leaders of its sustainability practice, said this:
"We're clearly leveraging our experience in Europe ... to build out and anticipate as best we can what impacts that will have on U.S. businesses. If the U.S. decides to adopt some reduction targets as a country, the stimulus and the impact on our U.S. economy will be magnitudes greater than what we've seen in any other individual country around the world."

Read the full article here.