What is greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting, or more commonly labeled, carbon accounting? Through a blog post series from 2023 and 2024, Michael Gillenwater and colleagues set out to answer this question. Through these posts, you’ll come to understand how we got to present-day GHG accounting and how we can move forward as we design and deliver more meaningful GHG accounting of the future.
Through a series of installments, Gillenwater interrogates this question and advances our fundamental understanding of the purpose, definitions, rules, and conceptualization of GHG accounting.
- Turning away from LCA (Installment N.-1)
- Furnishing definitions (Installment N.1)
- Fitting to purposes (Installment N.2)
- Allocation rules (Installment N.3)
- Further thoughts on responsibility & causation (Installment N.3 bis)
- Market-based mistake (Installment N.4)
- Is Scope 3 fit for purpose? Alternative GHG accounting frameworks for inventories and intervention impacts
- [Forthcoming – Intervention accounting framework beyond allocation]
These other blog posts also address key topics for the future of corporate GHG accounting:
- The most important GHG accounting concept you may not have heard of: the allocational-consequential distinction
- The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard…The dog that caught the car?
- The overlooked mystery of the missing GHG accounting principle (peer-reviewed version)
- Myth busting – Are corporate Scope 3 emissions far greater than Scopes 1 or 2?
- Do we need a paradigm shift on offsetting? Compensation to contributions
Interested in designing and delivering more meaningful GHG accounting? Join other GHGMI members in this discussion, and share these resources with your colleagues.
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