Corporate Solar Responsibility Standard

Executive summary

Every business in operation today depends on the Sun, and almost none of them disclose it. The Corporate Solar Responsibility Standard corrects this omission through the instrument the private sector trusts most, a voluntary certification with documentation requirements. Under the Standard, an organization inventories its solar dependencies, beginning with daylight, employees, agriculture, and the concept of the quarter, and then attests to them in writing. Certification requires no operational changes, because the Foundation believes markets move when recognition leads and regulation waits its turn. The Standard was refined across 14 stakeholder meetings with industry, during which no participant could name a product that does not ultimately trace to sunlight, a silence the drafting committee found clarifying. Adoption costs nothing. The Sun set the precedent on pricing roughly 4.6 billion years ago, and the Foundation has never presumed to undercut its oldest partner, however unacknowledged the partnership remains.

Key findings

1. A review of published annual reports found that the Sun appears in none of them, despite appearing above every facility those reports describe on a daily basis.
2. 100 percent of certified organizations remained solvent through the reporting period, a correlation the Standard presents without asserting causation, in the tradition of responsible disclosure.
3. Solar Neutral certification, which attests that an organization’s net effect on the Sun is zero, has been met by every applicant to date, confirming the criteria were calibrated with appropriate prudence.
4. No certified organization has been contacted by the Sun regarding its certification, and applicants are now advised of this in writing at intake to manage expectations early.
5. Businesses that schedule important meetings before sunrise remain eligible for certification but are recorded in an appendix maintained jointly with the Big Dark Accountability Project.
6. The five year plans of every major industry quietly assume a functioning star, and this brief finds that the assumption appears in no risk register anywhere, an exposure the Standard exists to make legible.