Sounds sort of like the storyline to a blues song. But the subject is just there to make a point - that you can't measure performance data in a vacuum, there are always contributing factors that need to be brought in to give context to the data.
Here is a good news story from Fast Company magazine's website. The good news for those of us that believe climate change is happening (the snow in my backyard this weekend should certainly be proof of that!), is that carbon emissions have dropped. Sort of. We think.
Why isn't anyone trumpeting the news that the USA was able to slash emissions by 7 percent? Because emissions decline has a number of very big contributing factors: the recession being a huge one. Less economic activity = less emissions, plain and simple.
Or how about population increase. With a 21-month-old already filling my garbage with diapers, and another little one on the way in the next week or two, I can say with certainty population increases are directly related to carbon emission increases. So say the USA's population increase had slowed, that would give you the false impression that carbon emissions were dropping.
It's important to look at those contributing factors because they tell a larger story about carbon emissions, which have very little to do with the efforts of Americans to reduce emissions.
A figure that I found much more interesting was "a 4.3% drop in the carbon intensity of the energy sector due to increased use of renewables and natural gas production efficiency improvements". You have cause and effect nicely bundled together here - cause, renewables and natural gas efficiencies; effect, drop in carbon intensity.
Looking at contributing factors when designing performance measurement frameworks and planning documents is extremely difficult, and often relegated to an "environmental scan" section of a plan. But finding ways of integrating the data can be extremely important, given the role that other factors can play on your data.
No comments:
Post a Comment