What's new in global carbon standards

Companies purchasing renewable energy face a fundamental challenge in how to account for these purchases under Scope 2 emissions reporting. Aligned with feedback from a global consultation process, the Protocol is now developing multiple credible reporting pathways that companies can adopt based on their circumstances. Rather than enforcing a single approach, organisations will have guided options including market-based methods that reflect renewable energy procurement, location-based methods that show grid average emissions, and consequential approaches that align with specific renewable contracts. This flexibility allows investors to understand the methodology each company has chosen and compare renewable energy strategies fairly across the market.

The Actions and Market Instruments (AMI) framework, an existing component of the GHG Protocol, is being refined and strengthened. Currently, when a company reports an emissions reduction, stakeholders cannot easily distinguish whether that reduction resulted from operational improvements or the purchase of carbon offsets. The enhanced AMI framework addresses this challenge through a multi-statement reporting approach. Companies will now report three distinct elements: the first statement shows physical emissions, representing what the organisation actually emits from its operations and value chain; the second statement displays market-based emissions, which accounts for offsets, renewable energy certificates, and other market instruments the company has purchased; the third statement presents the real-world GHG impact, demonstrating the actual emissions reductions that the organisation’s investments and business decisions are achieving. By separating these three components, stakeholders gain a complete picture of corporate climate performance and can identify genuine climate commitment rather than accounting adjustments alone.

The GHG Protocol's Scope 1, 2, and 3 standards currently exist as separate documents, alongside ISO's independent 14064-1 standard. This separation creates operational inefficiencies across the market. The GHG Protocol and ISO are consolidating all corporate carbon accounting standards into a single co-branded standard, with an integrated public consultation planned for Q2 2027. This unified standard will bring together all elements of corporate emissions accounting into one coherent framework. The significance of this consolidation, and how the ISO partnership amplifies its impact, is explored in detail below.