GHG Protocol
The Foundation of Corporate Climate Reporting.
The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard is the foremost international framework for corporate greenhouse gas reporting. It defines the Scope 1, 2 and 3 architecture, underpins every major disclosure scheme, and is moving into a new four-statement structure under the Actions and Market Instruments revision. This page sets out where it sits, what it requires of a verifier, and where Carbon Verification Limited’s practice is anchored.
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Adoption
The Standard Behind Almost Every Corporate Disclosure
The GHG Protocol is not one disclosure framework among many. It is the underlying methodology on which the major corporate climate frameworks have been built — CDP, SBTi, the GRI, TCFD/ISSB, and the EU’s CSRD. Where regulators have introduced mandatory disclosure, they have built on the same foundation. The numbers below come from corporate disclosure surveys covering large listed companies.
98%
FTSE 100
of FTSE 100 companies report GHG metrics and set operational emission targets, overwhelmingly using the GHG Protocol to define their Scope 1, 2 and 3 boundaries.
97%
S&P 500
of S&P 500 companies that disclose emissions rely on the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard as the foundation for their carbon accounting (2023 disclosure data).
92%
Fortune 500
of Fortune 500 companies that disclose emissions use the GHG Protocol — either directly or through reporting programmes built on its framework, including CDP.
~11.9k
UK SECR Reporters
UK enterprises mandated to disclose energy and emissions under SECR. Government guidance explicitly recommends the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard as the methodology.
FTSE 100 figure: KPMG corporate reporting analysis. S&P 500 figure: 2023 disclosure-survey data. Fortune 500 figure: companies disclosing through CDP and similar programmes. SECR population: UK Government Department for Energy Security & Net Zero published estimate.
Background
What the GHG Protocol Is
The GHG Protocol is a set of accounting and reporting standards developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Corporate Standard, first published in 2001 and revised in 2004, defines how organisations should quantify and report their greenhouse gas emissions. It has become the de facto common language of corporate carbon accounting.
Its influence comes not from regulatory mandate but from architectural primacy. The Scope 1 / Scope 2 / Scope 3 framework that organises virtually every modern emissions disclosure was introduced by the GHG Protocol. Where ISO 14064-1 codified inventory development requirements, it did so against the GHG Protocol’s underlying structure. Where CDP, SBTi, CSRD and ISSB built disclosure rules, they built on the same foundation.
What the GHG Protocol provides
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The Scope 1, 2, 3 framework for categorising emissions
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Organisational and operational boundary-setting rules (control vs equity-share approaches)
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Calculation methodology guidance for each scope
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The 15 Scope 3 categories covering value-chain emissions
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Guidance on market-based and location-based Scope 2 reporting
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Sector-specific guidance and increasingly detailed methodology updates
What it is not
- A verification body standard — that is ISO 14065
- A verification methodology — that is ISO 14064-3
- An accreditation regime — UKAS does not accredit verifiers against the GHG Protocol
- Static — the Actions and Market Instruments (AMI) revision is currently progressing through consultation
Scopes
The Scope 1, 2, 3 Architecture
The Scope architecture is the GHG Protocol’s most influential contribution. It distributes responsibility for emissions across the value chain in a way that enables comparable disclosure without double-counting at the inventory level. Every major reporting framework now uses it.
Scope 1
Direct emissions
Combustion in owned or controlled sources: gas boilers, fleet vehicles, on-site generators, fugitive refrigerant losses, process emissions.
Scope 2
Indirect energy
Emissions from purchased electricity, heat, steam and cooling. Reportable on both a location-based and a market-based basis under the dual-reporting requirement.
Scope 3
Value-chain emissions
All other indirect emissions across 15 categories: purchased goods and services, capital goods, transport, business travel, commuting, use of sold products, end-of-life treatment, investments, and more.
Scope 3 is where corporate inventories become methodologically demanding. The 15 categories collectively typically dwarf Scope 1 and Scope 2 combined for most service-economy organisations, yet they rely on supplier data, spend-based estimation, hybrid approaches, and supplier-specific factors. Verifying Scope 3 is a different discipline from verifying combustion emissions in a regulated activity. It is the territory in which the GHG Protocol revision is moving fastest, and is our core expertise →
The Coming Revision
The Multi-Statement Framework
The GHG Protocol Actions and Market Instruments (AMI) revision, currently progressing through consultation, restructures corporate emissions reporting into four distinct statements. Each carries its own evidential demands. Each will need verification methodology designed for it. The four-statement architecture is the most significant change to the Corporate Standard since its 2004 revision.
The shift matters for verifiers. An ISO 14065 accreditation confirms a body’s procedures conform to a verification body standard. It does not test the verifier’s readiness for the new statement structure or its methodological implications. Currency with the GHG Protocol — the framework against which the disclosures will actually be read — is the core requirement for Corportate GHG Verification.
Statement 1
Physical GHG Inventory
The familiar inventory: Scope 1 direct emissions, Scope 2 measured on a location basis, and Scope 3 across the 15 value-chain categories. The foundation of every existing CDP, SBTi, CSRD and SECR disclosure.
What changes for verifiers: all emissions associated with underlying activities and assets across all Scopes. The boundary between Statement 1 and Statement 2 must be cleanly drawn and documented.
Statement 2
Market-Based GHG Inventory
An expanded market-based view covering Scope 1, market-based Scope 2 and Scope 3, reflecting qualified contractual arrangements such as energy attribute certificates (REGOs, GoOs, I-RECs), virtual power purchase agreements and similar instruments.
What changes for verifiers: temporal matching between consumption and certificate issuance, deliverability testing, additionality assessment, and contractual instrument validity become first-class verification questions.
Statement 3
GHG Impact Statement
A consequential accounting statement reporting the impacts of actions — avoided emissions, emission reductions and removal enhancements — within and beyond the organisation’s value chain. Includes BVCM credit retirements and impact categories from value chain associated through to global beyond-value-chain impacts.
What changes for verifiers: this is genuinely new territory. Consequential accounting requires counterfactual baselines, attribution boundaries, and avoidance/reduction/removal distinctions that are absent from physical inventory verification.
Statement 4
Non-GHG Indicators
Performance indicators not expressed in CO2e, for example: percentage of low-carbon procurement, renewable energy purchases, financial contributions to mitigation, and intensity metrics. Connects emissions reporting to the underlying business indicators that drive it.
What changes for verifiers: indicator definitions, measurement boundaries and intensity denominator selection become verification questions in their own right.
How Carbon Verification Limited is preparing
We are tracking the AMI revision in real time and preparing our verification methodology against the four-statement structure ahead of formal adoption. Energy attribute certificate verification, consequential accounting for impact statements, and non-GHG indicator assurance are being built into our procedures now.
For clients moving towards multi-statement reporting, this matters in practical terms: verification reflecting current best practice.
UK Application
UK Statutory and Procurement Alignment
The GHG Protocol’s standing in the UK is not solely a matter of voluntary adoption. UK legislation and government procurement rules embed the framework into both mandatory disclosure and supplier qualification.
SECR
Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting
SECR mandates emissions disclosure in the annual report for quoted companies, large unquoted companies and large LLPs — approximately 11,900 UK enterprises. While the regulations do not prescribe a single methodology, the official UK Government guidance explicitly recommends the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard for calculating disclosed emissions.
Practical effect: the vast majority of SECR-compliant disclosures use the GHG Protocol to define their reporting boundary.
PPN 06/21
Government Procurement Carbon Reduction Plans
Procurement Policy Note 06/21 requires any business bidding for a UK central government contract worth more than £5 million to publish a Carbon Reduction Plan. The mandate explicitly requires suppliers to disclose their emissions using the Scope 1, Scope 2 and the specific Scope 3 categories defined by the GHG Protocol.
Practical effect: GHG Protocol fluency is a precondition of access to large UK public-sector contracts.
The bottom line is straightforward: if a UK organisation is publicly listed, mandated to report under SECR, or bidding on major government contracts, its carbon accounting is running on the GHG Protocol. Verification of that accounting needs to be performed by people fluent in the methodology against which the disclosures will be read.
A Common Confusion
GHG Protocol Fluency Is Not the Same as UKAS Accreditation
Procurement teams and audit committees occasionally treat UKAS accreditation as the test of whether a verifier is competent to opine on GHG Protocol-aligned disclosures. They are not the same thing, and the distinction is worth setting out plainly.
UKAS accreditation against ISO 14065
Tests a verification body’s procedures, impartiality controls, competence management and operational arrangements against the verification body standard.
Granted for a specific scope — and often technically focused on specific regulatory schemes, e.g. the verification of carbon dioxide emissions data from Maritime Transport, i.e. just one regulated activity, one gas, one sector, one transport mode.
Outside that scope, accreditation confers nothing. It does test currency with the GHG Protocol, correct application of GHG Protocol guidance, or readiness for the future AMI multi-statement framework.
GHG Protocol methodological fluency
Demonstrated through track record, sector experience, depth of practice across the 15 Scope 3 categories, and active participation in standards development.
Tested by clients and procurement teams who ask substantive methodological questions before engagement.
Is the foundation on which credible verification of corporate disclosures rests — whether the verifier is also accredited or not.
Both elements have value — in their own contexts. UKAS accreditation is appropriate, and required, for compliance-market verification work. GHG Protocol fluency is the substantive question for corporate disclosure.
A verification body accredited for a narrow regulated activity may have limited GHG Protocol practice across the breadth a corporate inventory demands. A verification body not pursuing accreditation in the compliance market may have decades of GHG Protocol practice across dozens of sectors. Neither structural choice, on its own, settles the question of whether a verifier is competent for a given engagement. More on the UKAS accreditation question →
Our Practice
Where Carbon Verification Limited Sits
Our entire practice is built on the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and the ISO frameworks that operationalise it. Two decades of corporate footprinting, across 23 economic sectors, against the methodology that almost every disclosure framework now uses.
We are not a compliance-market verifier with limited corporate experience. We are not a consultancy offering verification as an adjunct service. We are a structurally independent verification body whose specialism is the substantive question the GHG Protocol exists to answer: are the emissions an organisation reports the emissions an organisation has?
Methodological breadth
All 15 GHG Protocol Scope 3 categories. CHP allocation, refrigerant loss reconstruction, fleet and homeworking methodologies, half-hourly electricity data, custom and hybrid emission factors. Scope 4 avoided emissions where included.
Sector depth
23 economic sectors verified, from FTSE-listed financial institutions and NHS trusts to police forces, local government, international humanitarian NGOs and manufacturing operations spanning multiple continents.
Forward readiness
AMI multi-statement methodology in active preparation. ISO 14064-5:2026 remote verification adopted on publication. We do not wait for the next scope-extension accreditation cycle to apply current standards.
Specialist expertise. Applied to your organisation.
Our team brings two decades of sector-spanning GHG verification experience to every engagement. Tell us about your organisation and we will assign the right expertise.
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