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ENSURING INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
for some types of GHG accounting leaves certain accounting and reporting systems vulnerable to manipulation. Because emissions are the result of decisions by a decentralized and diverse set of actors in virtually every sector of the global economy, developing comprehensive GHG information will require time, financial investment and capacity-building.
Box 4.1 Major types of GHG accounting frameworks National National GHG inventories, required for parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are intended to document all human-caused emissions and removals within a country. Inventory reporting requirements are decided by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, and methodologies are developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).3 The Kyoto Protocol has additional accounting rules that determine which sources and sinks4 count towards a country’s assigned amount of permitted emissions. Increasingly, subnational jurisdictions, such as states, provinces and cities, also conduct GHG inventories based on a similar approach. Corporate Corporate GHG inventories include a company’s direct emissions (from sources owned or controlled by the reporting company) as well as indirect emissions from purchased electricity and other sources not owned or controlled by the reporting company. Companies use inventories to assess risks, identify opportunities to reduce emissions and publicly report emissions information. Standards include the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and ISO 14064-1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Facility Facility-level accounting includes emissions from a specific industrial installation; facility-level data collection is either a component of corporate GHG inventories or is undertaken to comply with mandatory reporting requirements. Project Project-level accounting, which quantifies the impact of GHG mitigation projects, is used to assign credits for offset projects in compliance-driven carbon markets, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and in voluntary markets. Rules include the GHG Protocol for Project Accounting, ISO 14064-2 and the Voluntary Carbon Standard, as well as methodologies used in specific markets, most prominently the CDM. Product This emerging practice tracks emissions associated with a specific good or service throughout its life cycle – be it a clothes dryer, a loaf of bread or mail delivery. The GHG Protocol and ISO are both developing international standards. The Carbon Trust has developed a standard (PAS-2050) for product life cycle accounting in the UK.
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