While every major telecom service provider is looking for ways to be more environmentally responsible, each company is charting its own path. For Qwest Communications, that first step is a clearer assessment of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across its North American footprint.

To accomplish that goal, Qwest chose to become the first major telecommunications provider to join the Climate Registry, a nonprofit organization that establishes consistent standards for organizations throughout North America so GHG emissions are reported accurately and transparently in one place.

“We’ve actually been participating with the Carbon Disclosure Project for three years, so the next step was to do verification,” said Darrell Lingk, director of Environmental Health and Safety at Qwest. “After looking at what was out there, the Climate Registry was best focused on the methodology you used to calculate” GHG emissions as Qwest worked to reduce them.

Qwest now will report its GHG emissions on an annual basis using the Registry’s General Reporting Protocol, which is based on the GHG measurement standards of the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council on Sustainability.

Qwest joined the Climate Registry as a founding member last May and also formed its own sustainability council, bringing in subject matter experts from different segments of the company to tackle both near-term and longer term environmental initiatives.

“The initial foundation is to understand how much energy we use as a company, how much fuel we use with our fleet,” Lingk said. “We need to look at our electricity use and break it down – how much goes to equipment, how much to buildings. Since we have been doing the Carbon Disclosure Project, every year we get a little more detail. Now we also look at employee travel.”

Through the sustainability council, Robin Seguin, environmental compliance manager at Qwest, is able to pull together all the information that exists in separate departments to get the complete picture of the company’s energy use. “For example, our real-estate division does have a very sophisticated utility database, and most of the information I need is already there,” Seguin said. “Our fleet management group also has information available.”