History
Initial efforts to create greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting methods were done largely at the national level. In 1995 theCarbon accounting drivers
Internal company drivers
A number of internal drivers have been described for corporate carbon accounting. These include: standing in published rankings, preparation for regulatory requirements and use in emissions trading, managing climate change related risks, investment due diligence (including in aquisitions), shareholder and stakeholder communication, staff engagement, and energy cost savings. Accounting for greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly framed as a standard requirement for business.Governmental requirements
Corporate greenhouse gas accounting is driven in part by a variety of legal requirements. These are typically introduced through specific laws on reporting, or within wider governmental environmental and sustainability requirements. Greenhouse gas emission trading schemes are also a factor in broadening the use of these accounting and reporting protocols. In 2015 these requirements covered more than 40 countries. Regulatory reporting examples include the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), part of a broader set of rules to make EU countries carbon neutral by 2050, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 55 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2030. It will require many large companies and companies with securities listed on EU-regulated markets to disclose a broad array of ESG information, including GHG emissions. The UK’s Environmental Reporting Guidelines update and clarify requirements in earlier laws that required companies to report information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their Directors’ Reports. These rules require companies with listings on stock exchanges, as well as other large companies, to report their global GHG emissions and an intensity ratio through their annual reports. Additionally, they are now required to report their total global energy use and information relating to energy efficiency and reporting methods used. In the US the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) requires facility based reporting (as opposeidereporting) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from large industrial facilities, fuel and gas suppliers, and CO2 injection sites. Facilities determine whether they are required to report factors such as the types of industrial operations located at the facility and their emission levels. A total of 41 industrial categories are covered by the GHGRP. Recent regulations are also coming from agencies that traditionally have had a financial focus. The Security Exchange Commission (SEC) 2022 proposed rule would require all companies, regardless of size, to report their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Larger companies would be required to disclose Scope 3 emissions only if they are material to the company, or if the company has set a reduced emissions target that includes Scope 3 emissions. Japan’s Financial Services Agency’s (FSA) also issued rules in 2022 that require financial disclosure of climate related information. These are expected to cover around 4,000 companies, including those listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Government procurement requirements have also begun to incorporate GHG reporting requirements. Both the US and the UK governments have recently issued executive type orders that require this practice. Emission trading schemes in various countries also play a role in promoting GHG accounting, as do international carbon offset programs. The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is a "cap and trade" system where a limit is placed on the right to emit specified pollutants over an area, and companies can trade emission rights within that area. EU-ETS is the second largest trading system in the world, covering over 40% of European GHG emissions. Greenhouse Gas Protocol is cited amongst its guidance documents. California’s cap-and-trade program operates along similar principles. International offset programs also contain requirements for identifying and quantifying emission reductions for a proposed project. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM-established under the Kyoto protocol), has a detailed set of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification procedures, as does the Reduction in Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. Similar procedures to document project reductions under Article 6 of the Paris agreement are yet to be determined.Non-governmental organization programs
A number of NGOs have developed programs that both promote GHG accounting/reporting and help define the ways in which it is carried out. The Carbon Disclosure project allows a range of protocols that can be designated when reporting, although most companies report GHG emissions using Greenhouse Gas Protocol or a protocol based on it. The Science Based Targets initiative specifically cites Greenhouse Gas Protocol guidance as part of its criteria and recommendations Similarly, the TCFD cites Greenhouse Gas Protocol in its recommended metrics and targets.Carbon accounting frameworks and standards
The 2006 IPCC guidelines provided a consensus description of several key quality principles that have been adopted in many of today's carbon accounting standards. The most consistently applied principles amongst these standards include: transparency, accuracy, consistency, and completeness. By contrast, the IPCC principle of comparability, as it might relate to comparing the emissions of various companies, is less widely applied. These standards typically cover the greenhouse gases and gas categories regulated under the Kyoto Protocol. These accounting and reporting standards can also be thought of as operating in two different contexts. One would be focused on allocating emissions to specific organizations, and measuring and tracking them over time (attributional). The other context involves efforts to measure various interventions and decisions that can reduce or mitigate GHG emissions (consequential).Corporate/local government standards
Corporations and facilities use a variety of methods to track and report GHG emissions. These include those from Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Global Reporting Initiative, the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, the Climate Registry, as well as several industry specific organizations. CDP lists an even broader set of acceptable methods for reporting in its guidance. Standards for cities and communities include the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories and the ICLEI U.S. Community Protocol (for cities/communities in the US).GHG Protocol
GHG Protocol is considered is the most used standard for GHG accounting. This standard reflects a number of accounting principles, including: relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy. The standard divides emissions into three scopes. Scope 1 covers all direct GHG emissions within a corporate boundary (owned or controlled by a company). It includes fuel combustion, company vehicles and fugitive emissions. Scope 2 covers indirect GHG emissions from consumption of purchased electricity, heat, cooling or steam. These emissions are a result of a company's activities but often occur outside a company's physical facility (e.g. at an electricity utility plant). Scope 2 emissions are considered an indirect emission source. They amount to at least one third of global GHG emissions, due to the high demand for, and consumption of, electricity. Scope 3 emission sources include emissions both upstream and downstream of the organization's activities (e.g. suppliers, product use, and transportation of goods). The largest part of a typical corporate GHG footprint is in the company's value chain. Scope 3 also covers other indirect emissions, such as the extraction and production of purchased materials and fuels, transport-related activities in vehicles not owned or controlled by the reporting entity, electricity-related activities (e.g. transmission and distribution (T&D) losses) not covered in Scope 2, outsourced activities, waste disposal, etc. There are 15 scope 3 categories, though not every category will be relevant to all organizations. Scope 3 emissions (also known asISO 14064
The ISO 14064 standards for greenhouse gas accounting and verification published in 2006 by theEPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Protocol
TheTask Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
TCFD disclosure standard for companies covers four thematic areas: governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets. There are seven principles TCFD prioritizes in its guidance. It emphasizes that disclosure should be: representative of relevant information; specific and complete; clear, balanced, and understandable; consistent over time; comparable amongst companies within a sector industry or portfolio; reliable, verifiable, and objective; and timely. The metrics and targets portion of the standard requires measurement and disclosure methods based on GHG Protocol. The TCFD's standard specifies that companies should disclose all Scope 1 and 2 emissions regardless of their material impacts on the company; it considers Scope 3 emission reporting to be dependent on whether they are "material", but recommends that they be included.Protocols for cities/communities
The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPC) is the result of a collaborative effort between the GHG Protocol at World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), and ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI). It requires a jurisdiction to first identify the inventory boundary, such as an administrative boundary for city or county. The protocol focuses on six main activity sectors: stationary energy; transportation; waste; industrial processes and product use; agriculture, forestry and other land use; and other emissions occurring outside the geographic boundary that are a result of a jurisdiction's activities. To distinguish between emissions that occur within a city boundary and outside, the protocol uses the same Scope 1,2 and 3 definitions from the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. The protocol is designed to allow inventories to be aggregated at the sub-national or national level in order to improve national inventories and measure the relative contribution of a city's efforts toward national mitigation targets. The protocol requires reporting of emissions by gas, scope, sector and subsector using two options. One is a framework that reflects a more traditional Scope 1, 2, and 3 assessment for the jurisdiction boundary that is decided on. Another is more focused on activities taking place within that jurisdiction, and excludes categories such as waste generated outside of it. The U.S. Community Protocol developed by ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability USA emphasizes the use of geographic/jurisdictional boundaries rather than corporate boundaries, and recommends a sources and activities framework rather than a scopes framework to calculate emissions. The guidance suggest communities consider the stories they wish to convey about community emissions and what reporting frameworks will help tell those stories. There are five basic emissions generating activities are included in the inventory guidance. These are: use of electricity by the community; use of fuel in residential and commercial stationary combustion equipment; on‐road passenger and freight motor vehicle travel; use of energy in potable water and wastewater treatment and distribution; and generation of solid waste by the community. Reporting guidance covers a variety of approaches, and organizations can include one or more of them. These include GHG activities and sources over which a local government has significant influence: GHG activities of community interest; household consumption; inventories of market based exchanges of emission offsets; or an inventory that incorporates the GHG fluxes (emissions and removals) from land use.Product accounting
Product accounting methods are part of a broader set of Life Cycle Assessment approaches in general and Product Carbon Footprint methods in particular. Product carbon footprints are based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), but focus on the single issue of climate change. They can be used for either a product or a service. Related standards include ISO 14067, PAS 2050, and GHG Protocol Product Standard. GHG Protocol for Products builds on the framework of requirements in the ISO 14040 and PAS 2050 standards. It is similar to GHG Protocol Scope 3, but focused on life cycle/value chain impacts for a specific product. The same five accounting principles apply as with the Corporate Standard. Steps include setting business goals, defining analysis boundaries, calculating results, analyzing uncertainties, and reporting. Boundaries for final products are required to include the complete cradle-to-grave life cycle. The ISO 14067 standard builds largely on other existing ISO standards for LCA. Steps include goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, interpretation, and reporting For ISO 14067, the life cycle stages that need to be studied in the LCA are defined by a variety of system boundaries. Cradle-to-grave: includes the emissions and removals generated during the full life of cycle of the product. Cradle-to-gate includes the emissions and removals up to where the product leaves the organization. Gate-to-gate includes the emissions and removals that arise in the supply chain. Product footprint analysis can provide insight into GHG contributions throughout the value chain. For a typical PCF, 45% of total value chain emissions arise upstream in the supply chain, 23% during the company’s direct operations, and 32% downstream.Project accounting standards and protocols
Project accounting standards and protocols are typically used to ensure the "environmental integrity" of projects that are designed to reduce GHG emissions in order to generate carbon offsets. They support both compliance type programs as well as voluntary markets. and cover both GHG accounting rules, as well as specific program requirements. Accounting rules cover areas such as monitoring, reporting, and verification. Program requirements can cover project eligibility, certification, and other aspects. Standards include Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, the Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry. Greenhouse Gas Protocol has also developed recommended methods for quantifying and reporting GHG reductions from these type of projects. These standards and protocols operate within a carbon offset industry that includes developers, brokers, auditors, and buyers. There are several principles that are designed to ensure environmental integrity of projects that are used to generate carbon offsets. A key one isISO 14064 Part 2
This standard specifies principles and requirements and provides guidance at the project level for quantification, monitoring and reporting of activities intended to cause greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions or removal enhancements. It includes requirements for planning a GHG project, identifying and selecting GHG sources, sinks and reservoirs relevant to the project and baseline scenario, monitoring, quantifying, documenting and reporting GHG project performance and managing data quality.Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards for projects and policies
The accounting principles in The GHG Protocol for Project Accounting are similar to those of ISO 14064 Part 2, namely relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, accuracy and conservativeness. Like the ISO standard, the protocol's focus is on core accounting principles and impact quantification, rather than the programmatic and transactional aspects of carbon credits. Additionality and uncertainty are not specifically required by the protocol, though there is general guidance on applying these concepts. WRI and WBCSD have also developed additional guidance documents for projects in the land use, forestry, and electric grid sectors. GHG Protocol Policy and Action Standard has similar accounting principles, but is mean to apply to interventions at a broader scale.VERRA
VERRA was initially developed in 2005, and is a widely used voluntary carbon standard. It adopts accounting principles based on ISO 14064 Part 2. These include relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy, transparency, and conservativeness. Allowable projects under VERRA include energy, transport, waste, and forestry. There are also specific methodologies for REDD+ projects. Verra has additional criteria to avoid double counting, requirements for additionality, a prohibition on any negative impact on sustainable development in the local community, and requirements for monitoring based on CDM standards.Gold standard
The Gold Standard was developed in 2003 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in consultation with an independent Standards Advisory Board. This group included NGOs, scientists, project developers and government representatives. Projects are open to any non-government, community-based organization. Allowable project categories include: renewable energy supply, energy efficiency, afforestation/reforestation, and agriculture. The program's focus includes the promotion of Sustainable Developments Goals, and projects are required to meet at least three of those goals, in addition to reducing GHG emissions. Projects must also make a net-positive contribution to the economic, environmental and social welfare of the local population. These are included in program monitoring requirements. The standard certifies additionality using various methods or based on project categories. There are also screens for double counting.Other Uses
In addition to being used to support the regulatory and NGO programs described above, GHG accounting protocols and standards have other uses.Renewable Energy Credits
Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) or a Guarantee of Origin (GO) documents that fact that one megawatt-hour of electricity is generated and supplied to the electrical grid through the use of eligible renewable energy resources. RECs are now being utilized around the world and are becoming more prevalent. The United Kingdom (U.K.) has used renewable obligation certificates since 2002 in order to ensure compliance with the U.K. Renewables Obligation. Across the European Union, GOs are used. Australia has used RECs since 2001. More recently, India set up a REC market. In the context of GHG accounting, RECs are often used to adjust estimated Scope 2 emissions. In a typical case, a company could calculate its Scope 2 emissions using its electricity consumption and grid emissions factor. Companies that purchase RECs can use them to lower average emissions factors in their accounting. This allows them to report lower emissions while their real electricity consumption stays the same.National Emissions Inventories
Data from facility level accounting can improve the overall quality and accuracy of national inventories by providing validation for inventory estimates and improved emissions factors. This depends in part on what percentage of the sector's emissions the available data covers. In some cases aggregated facility level data can also be used to update or modify inventory results for certain sectors.Net Zero Goals and GHG disclosure
The Net Zero concept emerged from the Paris Agreement, and has become a feature of both national laws and numerous corporate goals. Race to Zero was developed in 2019 to encourage private companies and sub-national governments to commit to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. SBTI created a Net Zero program in 2021 to assist organizations in making this transition. Accurate and comprehensive GHG accounting is considered a key element of for Net Zero transition plans, including the use of protocols such as GHG Corporate Standard. The CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) is an international NGO that helps companies and cities disclose theirEffectiveness and limitations
Effectiveness
With the advent of GHG reporting, there has been tremendous growth in the number of organizations measuring their emissions and providing reports. There are also efforts to make this information public, and provide rankings of companies and cities. News media often use these rankings to highlight companies that are emitting the most GHGs. A number of studies have looked at changes in GHG emissions that occur after GHG reporting begins. There is evidence from related programs that self reporting lowers emissions. EPA’s Toxic Release inventory is one such example. It’s been shown to have had a significant effect in reducing emissions of chemicals that facilities had been required to disclose information about. The studies focusing on changes in GHG emissions that result from GHG reporting have shown mixed results. Voluntary carbon reporting itself has often been shown to be ineffective in reducing GHG emissions. However, when looking at the additional impact of programs that require GHG emission reporting, studies have shown more of an effect. A recent study of UK reporting requirements showed that they do result in reduced corporate GHG emissions. Analyses of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program found that when firms are required to disclose their facility level emissions, it can also lead to a reduction in GHG intensity of their operations, though the evidence for reductions in absolute emissions is less clear . One suggestion for the effects of specific GHG reporting requirements is that they inhibit the ability of companies to portray their emissions in a flattering way, and so are forced to actually make changes that lower GHG emissions. There are some confounding factors involved in this research. These include whether or not the studies are done in places where there is also some sort of a price on carbon, such as the EU-ETS. Another variable is whether or not the requirements focus on larger companies that emit more GHGs. In addition, firms that are required to report on facility emissions appear to focus on controlling emissions for their affected facilities, but to then transfer emissions to nonreporting facilities that they also control.Limitations
Double counting
When two or more individuals or organizations claim ownership of specific emission reductions or carbon offsets. Double-counting occurs when the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) resulting from a particular activity are allocated to multiple parties in a supply chain, so that the total allocated emissions exceed the total actual emissions of that activity. For investors and according to cross-asset footprint calculations, double-counting can reach about 30-40% of an institutional investor's portfolio emissions.Data quality
A 2004 study on corporate disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions found that only 15 percent of companies that disclosed GHG emissions reported them in a manner that the authors considered complete with respect to the scope of emissions, type of emissions, and reporting boundary. However in 2023 many more point source measurements are being published, and it is hoped this will make it easier for such corporate disclosure to be independantly checked.See also
*References
Works Cited
*Garvin, Peter. "Carbon Accounting: Beyond The Calculation and Looking To The Future." Green Economy Post 9 Feb. 2010. < http://greeneconomypost.com/carbon-accounting-7439.htm > * *External links
Further reading
* Murphy, B, Edwards, A, Meyer, CP (Mick),Russell-Smith, J (Eds) 2015, Carbon Accounting and Savanna Fire Management, CSIRO Publishing, * * * Cobas-Flores, E. 1996. Life-cycle assessment using input-output analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University. * Cumberland, J. H. and B. Stram. 1976. Empirical applications of input-output models to environmental protection. In Advances in input-output analysis: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on input-output techniques, Vienna, April 22–26, 1974, edited by K. R. Polenske and J. V. Skolka, pp. 365–382. Cambridge: Ballinger. * * Heijungs, R. and S. Suh, The Computational Structure of Life Cycle Assessment, Springer, 2002. * IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 1995. IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories, vol. 1–3. UNEP, OECD and IPCC. * * Molloy, E. (2000)