ISO 14068-1 Carbon Neutrality Calculator | Footprint Balance, Offset Quality & Conformance Check
Enter your organisation’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint, within-boundary removals and offset portfolio, and the calculator returns both your carbon-neutrality balance and your conformance against ISO 14068-1:2023 — the mitigation hierarchy, credit integrity and durability tests a credible neutrality claim must pass.
Carbon neutrality is a claim you have to earn twice. ISO 14068-1:2023 treats a neutrality claim as two separate tests: an arithmetic balance — your footprint, minus removals within your boundary, minus the credits you retire, reaching net zero for the period — and a conformance test, which asks whether you got there the right way. This calculator runs both. It reports whether your numbers balance, and, separately, whether the claim would stand up under the Standard’s mitigation hierarchy, credit-integrity and durability provisions.
What it computes. You enter your subject and boundary, your Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprint in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, any greenhouse-gas removals occurring within your boundary, your carbon-neutrality management plan, and your offset portfolio tranche by tranche. The tool returns a balance waterfall (gross footprint → residual after within-boundary removals → net position after retired credits), a conformance verdict across four gateways, per-tranche credit-quality scoring, and a set of consistency checks. The two results are deliberately kept apart, because a claim can balance on paper and still fail the Standard.
It audits a footprint; it does not build one. The calculator consumes a Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory you have already compiled, expressed as pre-aggregated tonnes of CO2 equivalent. It performs no gas-by-gas global-warming-potential weighting itself — it works from the CO2e totals your inventory produced, ideally on a GHG Protocol Corporate Standard basis. Build the inventory first; this tool tests the neutrality claim that sits on top of it.
Where the thresholds come from. ISO 14068-1:2023 sets out principles and requirements for carbon neutrality but fixes very few numeric thresholds. The operational tests this calculator applies — a 1.5 °C-aligned annual reduction reference of 4.2% per year, a five-year credit-vintage staleness window, and a 100-year durability boundary separating short-lived from long-lived storage — are GreenCalculus engine defaults chosen to operationalise the Standard’s qualitative requirements. They are cited by clause where the Standard speaks to them, but the specific numbers are ours, not ISO-fixed values, and they are not read from a live data layer. Confirm any claim against the published Standard and an accredited verifier before relying on it.
Sec 5Subject & boundary
Define what the claim covers, the organisational boundary and consolidation approach, and the reporting period.
Sec 6Carbon footprint
Enter your own inventory totals in tCO₂e (from ISO 14064-1 / GHG Protocol). This is an auditor — it does not estimate your footprint for you.
Estimate within-boundary removals from area (optional)
Tier-1 annual sequestration from MasterBrain (IPCC AR6). For owned/controlled land inside your boundary — not for purchased credits.
Sec 7Carbon-neutrality management plan
ISO 14068-1 requires reduction before offsetting. Offsetting with no documented plan is non-conformant — a hard gate in this tool.
Sec 8Offsetting & credit quality
One line per retired credit tranche. Quality attributes drive the integrity + durability levels. Removal credits carry a durability class; avoidance credits do not (they are the like-for-like mismatch case against long-lived emissions).
Sec 9Carbon-neutrality claim
The scope and status of the claim. The engine cross-checks the claim against the evidence — a claim cannot cover a scope you have not quantified.
Audit mode adds the full per-datapoint conformance scoring table.
Enter your carbon footprint and offsets above to test the claim
Reconciliation, ISO 14068-1 conformance (four-level gateway ladder), a credit-quality audit, durability matching, and exportable JSON / CSV / coverage reports appear after calculation.
This is a GreenCalculus alignment indicator against ISO 14068-1:2023, not an ISO certification and not a substitute for independent validation/verification (e.g. under ISO 14064-3). The conformance band reflects a transparent GreenCalculus interpretation of the standard’s published structure; gateway thresholds, durability bands, the 1.5 degC linear annual reduction and the vintage window are documented defaults exposed in the methodology drawer and every export. Credit-project quality is taken from your own attestations — this tool does not independently verify any specific carbon-credit project or registry record. ISO 14068-1 is copyrighted; requirements are paraphrased and cited by clause. ISO 14068-1 standard notes.
For fifteen years, “carbon neutral” meant one thing in practice: total up the footprint, buy a matching pile of offsets, and announce the balance. The arithmetic closed, and that was the claim.
ISO 14068-1 keeps the arithmetic but adds a second question the old approach never had to answer — did you reduce before you offset, and are the credits real?
ISO 14068-1:2023 carbon neutrality requires that your footprint, less within-boundary removals, is balanced to zero by retired carbon credits — and that you reduced emissions first, with high-integrity credits skewed toward durable removals. Balancing the numbers is necessary but not sufficient; the mitigation hierarchy is a hard requirement.
This calculator implements ISO 14068-1:2023 — Climate change management — Transition to net zero — Part 1: Carbon neutrality, published November 2023. Under the Standard, a carbon-neutrality claim requires that the residual footprint — the gross footprint less greenhouse-gas removals within the subject’s boundary — is offset to a net of zero with retired carbon credits, having first reduced emissions in line with the mitigation hierarchy. ISO 14068-1 supersedes the role of PAS 2060; BSI has withdrawn PAS 2060 and moved carbon-neutrality verification to ISO 14068-1. The current release applies to organisation-level claims.
What this calculator determines
The calculator produces two results that are easy to conflate and important to keep apart: whether your carbon-neutrality claim balances, and whether it conforms to ISO 14068-1:2023. The balance is objective arithmetic. The conformance verdict is interpretive, testing the claim against the Standard’s requirements for reduction, credit integrity and durability. A claim can pass the first and fail the second — and that gap is the whole point of the page.
The balance — objective arithmetic
Starting from your gross Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint, the tool subtracts greenhouse-gas removals occurring within your boundary to give a residual carbon footprint, then subtracts the carbon credits you have retired to give a net position. If the net reaches zero, the claim balances for the period — shown as a balance waterfall and a Scope 1/2/3 breakdown. This is the part the old offset-only approach already did, and the tool does it the same way: residual minus retired credits equals net position.
The conformance verdict — interpretive
Separately, the calculator runs the claim through four conformance gateways — quantification, management plan, credit integrity, and durability and transition — and returns one of four verdicts: non-conformant, partially conformant, conformant (transition), or conformant. The decisive structural test is the mitigation hierarchy: retiring credits with no documented reduction plan behind them is a hard gate, not an arithmetic shortfall. A claim that balances perfectly but rests on offsets alone is reported as non-conformant regardless of the numbers.
This is an organisation-level carbon-neutrality auditing tool, not a footprint estimator. It consumes a pre-aggregated Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory and tests the neutrality claim built on it, returning two distinct results: an objective balance (footprint − within-boundary removals − retired credits = net position) and an interpretive ISO 14068-1 conformance verdict across four gateways. The balance and the conformance verdict can disagree, and that is by design.
The ISO 14068-1 framework — quantify, reduce, offset, declare
ISO 14068-1:2023 frames carbon neutrality as a managed sequence, not a single purchase. A subject quantifies its footprint, reduces it according to a documented plan, offsets the residual with high-integrity credits, and declares the claim transparently — in that order. The four stages below describe that path; the calculator’s gateways map onto them.
1 · Quantify
Establish the footprint of the subject — for the organisation-level claim this calculator handles, the Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, with a defined boundary and consolidation approach. Build it with a dedicated inventory tool first.
2 · Reduce
Cut emissions under a documented carbon-neutrality management plan before offsetting. The Standard puts reduction ahead of offsetting in a strict hierarchy — offsetting is for what genuinely remains, not a substitute for the work.
3 · Offset
Balance the residual footprint with carbon credits that are verified, additional, retired without double counting, and increasingly skewed toward durable removals. Quality and durability of the credits matter as much as the tonnage.
4 · Declare
State the claim transparently — the subject, boundary, period, footprint, reductions, and the credits used — so it can be independently verified. The claim is a documented, checkable position, not a slogan.
The mitigation hierarchy is a gate, not a guideline
The single most consequential feature of ISO 14068-1 — and the one this calculator enforces structurally — is that reduction precedes offsetting. The Standard does not let a subject skip the reduction step and offset its way to neutral. In the calculator, retiring credits with no documented management plan behind them trips a hard conformance gate: the claim may balance, but it is reported as non-conformant. This is the provision that separates ISO 14068-1 from the offset-only claims that preceded it, and it is why the tool keeps the balance and the conformance verdict on separate tracks.
Carbon neutrality under ISO 14068-1 is not an offsetting exercise with extra paperwork.
The reduction comes first and is non-negotiable; offsetting balances only the residual that reduction has not yet reached.
Two ways to read “neutral” — balance vs conformance
Because the tool reports balance and conformance separately, the most instructive case is a claim where the two disagree. Consider two organisations with the identical footprint and the identical net-zero balance, differing only in how they reached it. The arithmetic is the same; the verdicts are opposite — and that contrast is exactly the shift ISO 14068-1 introduced over the offset-only era.
| Test | Claim A — offset-only (old approach) | Claim B — ISO 14068-1-aligned |
|---|---|---|
| Gross footprint | 50,000 tCO₂e | 50,000 tCO₂e |
| Retired credits | 50,000 avoidance credits | 48,000, ~80% durable removals |
| Within-boundary removals | 0 | 2,000 |
| Documented management plan | None | Yes — ~4.5%/yr reduction trajectory |
| Credit integrity (verified · additional · no double counting) | Unverified / mixed | All three satisfied |
| Balance verdict | Achieved on paper | Achieved |
| Conformance verdict | Non-conformant (hierarchy gate) | Conformant |
Two claims with the same footprint and the same net-zero balance, differing only in method. Claim A reaches balance with avoidance credits and no reduction plan — it trips the mitigation-hierarchy gate and is reported “achieved with caveats” at best. Claim B reduces first, offsets the residual with verified, mostly durable removals, and conforms. Illustrative; thresholds are GreenCalculus engine defaults operationalising ISO 14068-1:2023.
Why “achieved with caveats” exists
The calculator’s balance result has a middle state — achieved with caveats — for exactly the Claim A situation: the net position reaches zero, but a structural conformance gate has tripped. It is not a passing grade dressed up politely; it is a flag that the numbers close while the claim does not meet the Standard. Reading that state as “basically neutral” is the most common and most consequential misreading the tool is built to prevent. A claim is either conformant or it is not, and the balance alone does not decide it.
A balanced footprint is not a conformant claim. If the net position reaches zero but there is no documented reduction plan, the calculator reports the balance as achieved-with-caveats and the conformance as non-conformant — because offsetting without reducing first fails the ISO 14068-1 mitigation hierarchy. Do not present an achieved-with-caveats balance as carbon neutrality under the Standard.
Offsets, removals and durability
ISO 14068-1’s most cited advance over its predecessor is the detail it brings to credit quality. It is not enough that a credit exists and matches a tonne of emissions — the credit’s type, durability, verification and additionality all bear on whether it can support a neutrality claim. The calculator scores each tranche of your offset portfolio against these dimensions and rolls them into quantity-weighted integrity meters.
| Credit dimension | What it distinguishes | In this calculator |
|---|---|---|
| Type — avoidance vs removal | Avoiding emissions elsewhere vs drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere | Scored per tranche; removal share rolled up as a portfolio metric |
| Durability | Short-lived (<100 yr) · long-lived (≥100 yr) · geological storage | Banded per tranche; like-for-like durability matching panel |
| Verification & additionality | Independently verified, additional, retired without double counting | Three attestations per tranche → quantity-weighted integrity meters |
| Vintage | How recent the credit is | Flagged stale beyond a 5-year window (engine default) |
Credit-quality dimensions the calculator scores per offset tranche. The durability bands (100-year boundary), the 5-year vintage window, and the recognised-registry list are GreenCalculus engine defaults operationalising ISO 14068-1:2023’s qualitative credit-integrity requirements — not numeric values fixed by the Standard.
Removals vs avoidance, and the shift over time
ISO 14068-1 distinguishes credits that remove carbon from the atmosphere from those that avoid emissions elsewhere, and expects a credible claim to lean increasingly on durable removals over time rather than avoidance credits. The calculator surfaces this as a removal-share metric and a declining-reliance attestation rather than a dated schedule — the Standard sets the direction, not a fixed percentage by a fixed year. Recognised, high-integrity registries such as Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard are where the verified, additional credits that survive this scoring typically originate.
Like-for-like durability matching
A subtle requirement the tool makes visible: the durability of the credits should match the nature of the emissions being balanced. Permanent fossil emissions are not credibly balanced by short-lived biological storage that may reverse. The calculator’s durability-matching panel shows how your portfolio’s durability profile lines up against your residual, so a claim resting on short-lived credits against long-lived emissions is visible rather than buried in a single net number.
Within-boundary removals and purchased credits are different things, and the tool keeps them apart. Removals occurring inside your boundary — for example, sequestration in woodland you own and operate — reduce the residual footprint before any credits are applied. Purchased credits are retired against whatever residual remains. Entering owned sequestration as a credit, or a purchased credit as a within-boundary removal, will distort both the balance and the conformance verdict.
How the calculator works
You enter the subject and boundary, the footprint, the management plan, and the offset portfolio; the tool recomputes the balance and the conformance verdict live as you go, with no separate calculate step.
Enter footprint and boundary
The subject and consolidation approach, the reporting and base years and period, and the Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint in tonnes of CO2 equivalent — pre-aggregated on a GHG Protocol basis. Add any greenhouse-gas removals occurring within the boundary.
Add the plan and the portfolio
The management-plan status and reduction achieved to date, then the offset portfolio one tranche at a time — quantity, type, durability class, vintage, registry, and the verified / additional / no-double-counting attestations.
Read both results
The balance waterfall and net position; the four-gateway conformance verdict and alignment percentage; per-tranche credit-quality scoring; consistency checks; a next-step prompt; and an audit trail you can export as JSON or CSV.
Reduction achieved to date feeds the conformance side only — it is compared against a 1.5 °C-aligned reference of 4.2% per year to gauge whether your trajectory is on track. It is never subtracted from your footprint to size your offsets. Your offsets are sized against the current residual, which is the footprint you enter minus within-boundary removals. Enter the footprint you have now, not a pre-reduction baseline.
Worked example — a 50,000 tCO₂e footprint
This example is illustrative and shows the balance arithmetic and the conformance contrast, not a footprint measurement — the tool audits a footprint you supply. Consider an organisation with a current gross footprint of 50,000 tCO2e (Scope 1 of 8,000, Scope 2 location-based of 12,000, Scope 3 of 30,000) and 2,000 tCO2e of greenhouse-gas removals within its boundary from owned, actively managed woodland.
Resolving the balance
Within-boundary removals come off the gross footprint first: 50,000 less 2,000 leaves a residual carbon footprint of 48,000 tCO2e. The credits required to reach a net of zero equal that residual — 48,000 tCO2e retired. Note what the reduction percentage does not do here: it does not reduce the 50,000. The 50,000 is the footprint as it stands now; reduction-to-date is a conformance input, compared against the 4.2%-per-year reference, not a number subtracted from the balance. With zero within-boundary removals, the credits required would simply equal the gross footprint of 50,000.
| Balance line | tCO₂e | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gross carbon footprint | 50,000 | S1 8,000 · S2-LB 12,000 · S3 30,000 |
| − Within-boundary removals | 2,000 | Owned, managed woodland (example) |
| = Residual carbon footprint | 48,000 | The amount credits must balance |
| − Offsets retired | 48,000 | Verified, additional, mostly durable removals |
| = Net position | 0 | Balance achieved |
Illustrative balance for the stated inputs (50,000 tCO₂e gross, 2,000 within-boundary removals, 48,000 retired credits). Deterministic for these inputs; the live tool renders the same balance for the same inputs. Reduction percentage and management-plan status are entered separately and drive the conformance verdict, not this balance.
The same balance, two verdicts
Now apply the conformance test. If those 48,000 credits are avoidance credits with no documented reduction plan behind them, the balance still reads zero — but the mitigation-hierarchy gate trips and the claim is non-conformant, reported as achieved-with-caveats. If instead the organisation has a documented plan with a roughly 4.5%-per-year reduction trajectory and the 48,000 credits are verified, additional and around 80% durable removals, the same balance is reported as conformant. Identical arithmetic, opposite verdicts — the difference is entirely in how neutrality was reached.
For a 50,000 tCO₂e gross footprint with 2,000 tCO₂e of within-boundary removals, the residual is 48,000 tCO₂e and the credits required to balance are 48,000 tCO₂e. Whether that balanced claim conforms to ISO 14068-1 depends entirely on the management plan and the credit quality — not on the balance, which is identical either way.
ISO 14068-1 vs PAS 2060 vs SBTi net zero
Three frameworks are routinely confused here, and the confusion is costly. ISO 14068-1 is the current international carbon-neutrality standard; PAS 2060 is its withdrawn predecessor; and an SBTi net-zero target is a different commitment entirely. The migration from PAS 2060 to ISO 14068-1 is the most pressing of the three for most organisations, so it leads.
From PAS 2060 to ISO 14068-1
PAS 2060:2014 was the British Standards Institution’s specification for demonstrating carbon neutrality, and for over a decade it was the reference most “carbon neutral” claims pointed to. ISO 14068-1:2023 supersedes that role: it builds on PAS 2060’s principles but adds materially stronger provisions on credit integrity and durability, and pushes the mitigation hierarchy from a recommendation toward a requirement. BSI has withdrawn PAS 2060 and moved its carbon-neutrality verification to ISO 14068-1. Organisations that previously claimed neutrality under PAS 2060 are migrating to the ISO standard for any forward-looking claim, and the practical effect of the move is that an offset-heavy claim that satisfied the old specification may not conform to the new one. The companion PAS 2060 carbon-neutral demonstration calculator remains available for understanding or reconciling historical claims.
| Framework | Core claim | Reduction requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISO 14068-1:2023 | Carbon neutrality — balanced residual, mitigation hierarchy enforced | Reduction-first hierarchy; strong credit-integrity and durability provisions | Current international standard |
| PAS 2060:2014 | Carbon-neutral demonstration, period by period | Reduction plan required; offsets could carry much of the claim | Withdrawn — superseded by ISO 14068-1 |
| SBTi Corporate Net-Zero | Science-based net zero — deep reduction plus residual neutralisation | ≥90% reduction by 2050; removals neutralise residual only | Current — a target, not a neutrality claim |
Carbon-neutrality and net-zero frameworks compared. ISO 14068-1 and PAS 2060 are neutrality frameworks (balance a footprint each period); SBTi net zero is a long-horizon science-based reduction target. Characterisations as of June 2026; ISO 14068-1:2023 citation per the published Standard.
vs PAS 2060
PAS 2060 is the withdrawn predecessor. ISO 14068-1 keeps its period-by-period balancing logic but tightens credit integrity, durability and the reduction hierarchy. Use the PAS 2060 calculator for historical claims; use this one for any forward-looking claim.
vs SBTi net zero
An SBTi net-zero target requires a deep, long-horizon reduction (at least 90% by 2050) with removals neutralising only the residual. Carbon neutrality is a recurring balancing claim that can use a wider range of credits. Scope a target with the SBTi net-zero target calculator.
vs the inventory itself
Neither this tool nor any neutrality claim measures emissions. The footprint comes first, built on a GHG Protocol basis. Compile it with the ISO 14064-1 GHG inventory calculator, then bring the totals here to test the claim.
Common carbon-neutrality errors
The recurring mistakes here turn a defensible claim into a non-conformant one, or hide a weakness inside a net number. The ones below most often produce a claim that fails ISO 14068-1 verification.
01 — Offsetting without reducing
Retiring credits with no documented reduction plan trips the mitigation-hierarchy gate. The balance may close, but the claim is non-conformant. Reduction comes first under the Standard.
02 — Reading “achieved with caveats” as neutral
The middle balance state flags that the numbers close while a conformance gate has tripped. It is a warning, not a pass — a claim is either conformant or it is not.
03 — Avoidance credits against permanent emissions
Balancing long-lived fossil emissions with short-lived or avoidance credits fails like-for-like durability. The durability-matching panel surfaces the mismatch a single net figure would hide.
04 — Confusing removals with credits
Within-boundary removals reduce the residual before offsetting; purchased credits balance what remains. Entering one as the other distorts both the balance and the verdict.
05 — Unverified or stale credits
Credits that are not independently verified, not additional, double-counted, or beyond the vintage window weaken the integrity meters. Tonnage alone does not make a credit count.
06 — Treating it as a one-off
Carbon neutrality is a claim made for a defined period and re-made each period, with reductions deepening over time. A single year’s balance is not a standing status.
Scope boundary — what this tool does not cover
This calculator tests an organisation-level carbon-neutrality claim against ISO 14068-1:2023. It does not build the emissions inventory, set a science-based reduction target, source credits, or perform verification — those are separate tasks, several with their own calculators.
| Task | What it is | In this tool? |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation-level neutrality claim | Balance + ISO 14068-1 conformance verdict | Yes — this is what the calculator tests |
| Scope 1, 2 & 3 inventory | The footprint the claim rests on | No — build it first; see the ISO 14064-1 GHG inventory calculator |
| Product / service / event / building neutrality | Neutrality for a non-organisation subject | No — organisation-level only in the current release; other subjects are on the roadmap |
| Science-based reduction target | A long-horizon net-zero target | No — see the SBTi net-zero target calculator |
| Historical PAS 2060 claim | A claim under the withdrawn predecessor | No — see the PAS 2060 calculator |
| Credit verification | Independent assurance of credits and claim | No — use an accredited verifier; the tool scores integrity, it does not assure it |
A conformance verdict from this tool is not ISO 14068-1 verification. It scores a claim against the Standard’s requirements to show whether it is on track and where it is weak — it does not measure your emissions, source your credits, or provide the independent assurance the Standard expects. A claim made publicly should rest on a genuine GHG Protocol inventory, a documented reduction plan, high-integrity credits, and assurance from an accredited verifier.
Data sources and status transparency
This tool is deliberately data-layer-light
Unlike calculators whose factors are read live from the GreenCalculus Master Brain, this one reads no carbon-neutrality parameters from a data layer — and that is by design, not an omission. ISO 14068-1 is a conformance framework rather than a factor table: the footprint is your own inventory, and the Standard fixes very few numbers. The footprint you enter is the input; the conformance logic is applied to it directly. There is no live ISO 14068 dataset behind the verdict.
The thresholds are GreenCalculus engine defaults
The operational thresholds the tool applies — the 4.2%-per-year reference used to gauge 1.5 °C alignment, the five-year credit-vintage staleness window, the 100-year boundary between short-lived and long-lived durability, and the conformance-gateway pass marks — are GreenCalculus engine defaults chosen to operationalise the Standard’s qualitative requirements. ISO 14068-1:2023 does not specify a 4.2%-per-year rate, a five-year vintage window, or a 100-year durability boundary. These numbers are ours, documented and cited by clause where the Standard speaks to them, and carried as hardcoded engine defaults rather than data-layer values. Treat them as GreenCalculus interpretation, and confirm any claim against the published Standard and an accredited verifier.
The one live data read
The single value the tool reads from the Master Brain is an optional convenience on the footprint side: a within-boundary removal helper that estimates a removal tonnage from a land area and land type, using IPCC AR6 sequestration averages. It writes an estimate into the removals field; it is a footprint input aid, not an ISO 14068 parameter, and it does not touch the conformance logic. The footprint itself should be built on a GHG Protocol Corporate Standard basis using the IPCC AR6 global-warming-potential values, upstream of this tool.
Versioning and status
The conformance logic is stamped to ISO 14068-1:2023 and to the verification date shown in the page header. ISO standards are revised periodically, and BSI’s withdrawal of PAS 2060 means historical claims and forward-looking claims now sit under different references — so confirm the current status of both the Standard and any credit programme before treating a verdict as current. The full methodological treatment is on the paired ISO 14068-1 carbon neutrality methodology page.
Frequently asked questions
ISO 14068-1:2023 is the international standard for carbon neutrality, published in November 2023. It defines carbon neutrality as a state in which a subject’s residual carbon footprint — its gross footprint less greenhouse-gas removals occurring within its boundary — is balanced to a net of zero by retired carbon credits, having first reduced emissions under a documented management plan following the mitigation hierarchy. It supersedes the role of the withdrawn PAS 2060, adding stronger requirements on credit integrity and durability.
No — ISO 14068-1:2023 is the successor to PAS 2060:2014 and supersedes its role. It builds on PAS 2060’s principles but strengthens the provisions on carbon-credit integrity and durability and pushes the reduction-before-offsetting hierarchy from a recommendation toward a requirement. BSI has withdrawn PAS 2060 and moved its carbon-neutrality verification to ISO 14068-1. Historical claims may reference PAS 2060; any forward-looking claim should use ISO 14068-1.
Not under ISO 14068-1. The Standard enforces a mitigation hierarchy in which emission reduction comes before offsetting — offsetting balances only the residual that reduction has not yet reached. A claim that retires enough credits to balance the footprint but rests on offsets alone, with no documented reduction plan, fails the hierarchy. In this calculator that is a hard conformance gate: the balance may reach zero, but the claim is reported as non-conformant.
The balance is objective arithmetic: gross footprint, less within-boundary removals, less retired credits, reaching a net of zero. Conformance is whether the claim meets ISO 14068-1’s requirements — reduction first, high-integrity credits, durability matching, transparent declaration. The two are reported separately because a claim can balance on paper and still fail conformance. A balanced footprint is necessary for a neutrality claim, but it is not sufficient.
Within-boundary removals are greenhouse-gas removals occurring inside the subject’s own boundary — for example, sequestration in woodland the organisation owns and operates. They reduce the residual footprint before any credits are applied. Carbon credits are purchased and retired to balance whatever residual remains. The calculator keeps them on separate lines: removals come off the gross footprint first, then credits balance the residual. Entering one as the other distorts both the balance and the conformance verdict.
A credit supports a neutrality claim when it is independently verified, additional, and retired without double counting, and when its durability matches the emissions it balances — permanent emissions need durable storage, not short-lived or reversible credits. ISO 14068-1 also expects a credible claim to lean increasingly on durable removals rather than avoidance credits over time. This calculator scores each offset tranche on type, durability, verification, additionality and vintage, and rolls them into quantity-weighted integrity meters.
No. Carbon neutrality under ISO 14068-1 is a recurring claim that balances a footprint for a defined period, reducing first and offsetting the residual with high-integrity credits. An SBTi net-zero target is a long-horizon, science-based commitment to deep reduction — at least 90% by 2050 — with permanent removals neutralising only the small residual that remains. Neutrality is a balancing claim made each period; net zero is a target end-state. They are related but distinct, and treating them as synonyms is a common source of greenwashing risk.
No. It consumes a Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint you have already compiled, expressed as pre-aggregated tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, and tests the neutrality claim built on it. It performs no gas-by-gas global-warming-potential weighting and builds no part of the inventory. Build the inventory first on a GHG Protocol basis — the ISO 14064-1 GHG inventory calculator is a starting point — then bring the totals here to test the claim.
No. The conformance verdict scores your claim against ISO 14068-1’s requirements to show whether it is on track and where it is weak — it is a planning and self-assessment aid, not independent assurance. A carbon-neutrality claim made publicly should rest on a genuine GHG Protocol inventory, a documented reduction plan, high-integrity credits, and verification from an accredited body. The tool helps you prepare for that verification; it does not replace it.
Methodology notes and limitations
A claim-auditing tool, not a footprint engine. The calculator tests an organisation-level carbon-neutrality claim against ISO 14068-1:2023. It consumes a pre-aggregated Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, performs no gas-by-gas weighting, and builds no part of the inventory. It returns two distinct results — an objective balance and an interpretive conformance verdict.
Balance and conformance are separate by design. The balance (gross footprint − within-boundary removals − retired credits = net position) is arithmetic. The conformance verdict runs four gateways — quantification, management plan, credit integrity, durability and transition — and the mitigation hierarchy is enforced as a hard gate: offsets with no documented reduction plan render a balanced claim non-conformant.
No ISO 14068 data layer. The tool reads no carbon-neutrality parameters from the Master Brain — by design, because ISO 14068-1 is a conformance framework, not a factor table. The conformance logic is applied directly to the footprint you enter; there is no live ISO 14068 dataset behind the verdict.
The thresholds are GreenCalculus engine defaults. The 4.2%-per-year 1.5 °C-alignment reference, the five-year vintage staleness window, the 100-year durability boundary, and the gateway pass marks are GreenCalculus defaults operationalising the Standard’s qualitative requirements. ISO 14068-1:2023 does not fix these numbers; they are cited by clause where the Standard speaks to them but are GreenCalculus interpretation, carried as hardcoded engine defaults, not data-layer or ISO-fixed values.
One live data read, on the footprint side. An optional within-boundary removal helper estimates a removal tonnage from a land area and type using IPCC AR6 sequestration averages, writing an estimate into the removals field. It is a footprint input aid only and does not affect the conformance logic.
Organisation-level only in this release. ISO 14068-1 applies to organisations, products, services, events and buildings; this calculator supports the organisation-level claim. Product, service, event and building subjects are present but disabled, on the roadmap rather than in the current release.
Worked example is illustrative. The 50,000 tCO2e example shows the balance arithmetic — 2,000 within-boundary removals, 48,000 residual, 48,000 credits to net zero — and the conformance contrast, for the stated inputs, not a footprint measurement.
A verdict is not verification. The conformance verdict is a self-assessment and planning aid. A public neutrality claim requires a genuine GHG Protocol inventory, a documented reduction plan, high-integrity credits, and independent assurance from an accredited verifier. Confirm any claim against the published ISO 14068-1:2023 and the current status of any credit programme before relying on it. The full methodological treatment is on the paired ISO 14068-1 carbon neutrality methodology page.