GHG Protocol
The GHG Protocol is the world's most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standard. Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), it provides frameworks for organizations, cities, and countries to measure and manage their emissions across three scopes.
The GHG Protocol comprises several standards. The Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard defines Scope 1, 2, and 3 boundaries and calculation approaches for organizations. The Scope 2 Guidance specifies location-based and market-based accounting for purchased energy. The Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard details methodologies for all 15 Scope 3 categories. The Product Standard covers lifecycle emissions for individual products. The GHG Protocol for Cities (GPC) covers city-level inventories.
The protocol requires organizations to follow five principles: relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy. It specifies operational or financial control approaches for setting organizational boundaries and requires base year recalculation when structural changes occur.
Nearly every major regulatory framework references or builds upon the GHG Protocol: CSRD/ESRS, SEC Climate Disclosure, California SB 253, CDP questionnaires, and SBTi target-setting all assume GHG Protocol-aligned inventories. Carbon accounting platforms like Gravity implement GHG Protocol methodologies as built-in calculation logic, ensuring that emission factors, allocation rules, and reporting outputs conform to the standard.
Frequently asked questions
What is the GHG Protocol? +
The GHG Protocol is the most widely used international standard for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions. Developed by WRI and WBCSD, it defines Scope 1, 2, and 3 boundaries, calculation methodologies, and reporting principles used by over 90% of Fortune 500 companies.
What are the five principles of the GHG Protocol? +
The five principles are relevance (appropriate boundary and methodology), completeness (all material sources included), consistency (year-over-year comparability), transparency (clear assumptions and methods), and accuracy (minimizing systematic errors and uncertainty).
Is the GHG Protocol mandatory? +
The GHG Protocol itself is voluntary, but it is referenced or required by nearly every major regulatory framework including CSRD/ESRS, SEC climate disclosure, California SB 253, CDP, and SBTi. In practice, most corporate emissions reporting follows GHG Protocol standards.
Related terms
Carbon Accounting
Carbon accounting is the systematic process of measuring, recording, and reporting the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by an organization, product, or activity. It follows standardized methodologies — most commonly the GHG Protocol — to quantify emissions across Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (purchased energy), and Scope 3 (value chain) categories, producing an auditable inventory that underpins disclosure, reduction planning, and regulatory compliance.
Scope 1 Emissions
Scope 1 emissions are direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources that an organization owns or controls. This includes combustion of fossil fuels in owned boilers, furnaces, and vehicles; process emissions from manufacturing; and fugitive emissions such as refrigerant leaks and methane from owned landfills.
Scope 2 Emissions
Scope 2 emissions are indirect greenhouse gas emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed by an organization. They are called 'indirect' because the emissions physically occur at the power plant or utility, not at the reporting company's facilities.
Scope 3 Emissions
Scope 3 emissions are all indirect greenhouse gas emissions that occur in an organization's value chain — both upstream (suppliers, purchased goods, business travel, employee commuting) and downstream (product use, end-of-life treatment, investments). Scope 3 typically represents 70–90% of a company's total carbon footprint.
Emission Factor
An emission factor is a coefficient that converts an activity measurement — such as litres of fuel burned, kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed, or dollars spent on a commodity — into a quantity of greenhouse gas emissions, typically expressed in kilograms or tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e).
CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is the European Union's mandatory sustainability reporting law. It requires companies operating in the EU above certain thresholds to disclose environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), with third-party assurance.