Accountants have leading role to cut greenhouse gases

Certified Practising Accountants (CPA) president Alex Malley said that he believed big businesses needed to address the size of their carbon footprint.

He said he foresaw business being forced to reveal an environmental report to the public, much like a financial review.

"As we have now an annual report that reports a company's performance, this, we see, is another way which you're going to have to report to the community," Malley told reporters.

Climate change and the responsibility a company has in addressing it was one of the highest priorities of corporate and government agendas, he said.

"I think that our profession is going to be a key player in determining the way companies will report (on their environmental impact) from now on," he said.

"We're talking about organisations realising that they have an impact and recognising that they need to measure that impact ... it (the company) then has a benchmark number that it can say `well we want to reduce that over the next five years'."

Accountants have always been required to "manage, measure and report resources", Malley said.

However, the term resources is more than "motor vehicles an equipment", he said.

"The previous version of a resource was the tangible ... but the reality is resources cover a lot more ground.

"CO2 emissions and other issues relating to climate change and other matters all come down to resources and the management of resources.

"It's fundamentally what we've been trained to do."

CPA Australia, one of the world's largest accounting bodies, has commissioned the Carbon Reduction Institute to audit Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.