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International Carbon Management Standards

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Accounting and Reporting Standards

The Carbon Management Tool allows you to calculate your carbon emissions and also shows you how you can reduce those emissions. While these are vital initial steps in carbon management, there are many more issues where guidance and standards are required to provide clarity in a potentially complex area. 

Larger organisations in particular need guidance for 'corporate' or higher level issues such as how to define the organisational boundary (equity share or control approach), how to choose which carbon emissions are analysed in detail, how to set targets or how to refine calculating emissions. Also, from a project level there is a need for internationally accepted rules and standards for assessing and quantifying emissions. 

These issues and many more are addressed in 2 similar and broadly compatible standards. These are;

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative

ISO 14064

These standards are the internationally recognised standards in greenhouse gas accounting, reporting, verification and validation. 

These standards can provide the guidance necessary to go beyond what the Carbon Management Tool can do, however, since the calculator itself is guided by the GHG Protocol; some of the concepts within these standards will be familiar to users of the Change CMT. The CMT can form the basis for further development of your own carbon management using these recognised standards.

Life Cycle Analysis

Life Cycle analysis looks as the carbon emissions from goods or services from the entire life of the product or service or from cradle to grave. For goods the process involves assessing GHG emissions from initial sourcing of raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and ultimately recycling and or waste generation.

A recently developed standard in life cycle assessment is PAS 2050. PAS 2050 was developed by BSI Standards Solutions at the request of the Carbon Trust and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK, and aims to provide an internationally recognised method to measure the GHG emissions embodied in goods and services.