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GHG Protocol Advances Impact Accounting
Coverage from Corporate Energy Buyers Association, CRS, and others
The GHG Protocol’s Actions and Market Instruments workstream is developing a consequential, or impact, accounting approach that would sit alongside conventional emissions inventories and show how corporate electricity decisions affect system-wide emissions.
The proposed framework uses marginal emissions, including build and dispatch effects, to estimate induced emissions from demand and avoided emissions from clean power procurement, storage, or other interventions. It could steer investment toward actions with greater incremental impact, but important questions around baselines, additionality, data quality, assurance, and how the approach fits with annual and hourly matching remain unresolved.
The story has shifted from a general debate over accounting methods to a more specific proposed GHG Protocol framework that would add impact accounting as an optional companion to conventional inventories. The new version also adds unresolved design details—especially baselines, additionality, data quality, and assurance—that suggest the framework is moving toward implementation but is still unsettled.