What is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol?

The Paris Agreement, put into action in 2016, is a legally binding multilateral treaty that includes many of the world’s largest economies. The treaty states that the participating countries will take steps to keep “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” with the ultimate goal “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” As governments look to decrease their carbon footprint per this agreement, companies will play an integral role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) saw a need to create an international standard for carbon reporting to allow businesses and governments to accurately assess their carbon footprints and align their emissions with the Paris Agreement. So, they formed The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol). Similar to the globally accepted accounting principles in finance, the GHG Protocol is a set of standardized carbon accounting principles and guidelines, which are used for accurate, comparable, and transparent carbon reporting.  

Carbon accounting plays a critical role in understanding the risks a company faces and how to mitigate them. The GHG Protocol provides corporate leadership with detailed information to formulate strategic carbon reduction paths to increase the business’s overall sustainability, accountability, and reputation.  

The GHG Protocol offers a collection of standards, calculation tools, and online courses. In fact, in 2016, 92% of Fortune 500 companies that participated in the CDP (a voluntary reporting framework) implemented the GHG Protocol, either by using it directly or through a program based on it.

The GHG Protocol has a variety of tools and standards that vary by organization type and goal. These include:

• Corporate Standard, which provides companies and organizations with a comprehensive framework for accounting and reporting GHG emissions
• Corporate Value Chain Standard for companies and organizations to calculate their scope 3 emissions 
• GHG Protocol for Cities, which targets cities and communities preparing a GHG emissions inventory 
• Mitigation Goal Standard, which outlines how cities and countries can assess and report their progress toward achieving a specific goal
• Policy and Action Standard, which provides estimates for countries and cities to calculate how different policies will affect GHG emissions
• Product Standard for companies and organizations to quantify the total GHG emissions throughout a product’s life 
• Project Protocol for companies, organizations, countries, and cities to determine the GHG benefits of climate change mitigation projects. 

Knowing how to use the GHG Protocol and understanding the nuances for different industries can be time-consuming and confusing. That is why here at Aclymate, we have integrated the GHG Protocol into all of our carbon accounting software to help make firms’ climate journeys easy, approachable, and affordable. 

The GHG Protocol offers a reliable and globally accepted way to calculate an organization’s carbon footprint. It plays an important part in transparency with investors and other stakeholders and bolsters a company’s reputation and corporate sustainability.