Carbon accounting may be the wonkiest topic in the already wonky world of climate change and emissions reduction. And few areas inspire more passionate debate and infighting than the rules for measuring and attributing them. But underneath the jargon lies a high-stakes question: who is responsible for each ton of carbon emissions? How that question is answered over the coming months and years will shape everything from climate regulations to corporate energy purchasing decisions.
To understand the carbon accounting landscape, you need to understand the system at the center of the debate. For more than two decades, one approach, known as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), has flourished and become the de facto global standard. Under GHGP’s approach, emissions are divided into scopes: Scope 1 for direct emissions from a company’s operations, Scope 2 from a company’s purchased electricity, heat, and cooling, and Scope 3 for value chain emissions. The GHGP approach has driven a variety of guidance documents and informed regulation and certifications issued by other entities.
The resulting fault lines in the carbon accounting debate are many. There are technical questions like over what time scale (hourly vs. annual) companies must match their electricity use with their clean energy purchases. And there are questions about the degree to which carbon accounting relies on estimates rather than true measurements. But, perhaps more than anything else, there is a debate about responsibility: in accounting for emissions, who should really be held responsible?
The weather in Aspen was unseasonably warm. That didn’t keep the seminar room from turning chilly at times. While no one in Aspen said that the GHGP approach is perfect, perspectives on what to change and by how much varied widely.
The critiques are multifold. The GHGP approach allows for “double-counting.” In other words, multiple companies end up accounting for the same emissions under different scopes. Think of steel in a building. The steel producer, the construction firm, and the building owner are all technically responsible for the steel emissions.
The sharpest divide, however, concerns emissions from using a product. Under GHGP’s Scope 3, an oil company counts the emissions from every gallon of gasoline its customers burn. That is the primary driver of its enormous carbon footprint. An e-ledger works differently, with emissions traveling with a product and responsibility belonging to whoever does the burning. That leaves consumers with greater accountability even if they have little influence over the broader system.
At the same time, the call for change comes amid the retrenchment of climate from its front and center position in the public zeitgeist, making some companies less willing to commit the resources necessary to fully embrace the work required by GHGP. GHGP has responded, hiring a new CEO and instituting a string of reforms.
What happens next in this wonky corner of the climate community concerns more people than you might expect. It will shape regulations—including climate disclosure rules in California and the European Union—and affect where businesses target their climate initiatives. Perhaps most importantly, it will affect how we answer the question of who is responsible for future emissions.
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