GHG accounting standards

The core protocols for quantifying and reporting corporate and product emissions — the GHG Protocol suite, ISO 14064 and the IPCC inventory guidelines.

15 standardsreviewed Oct 2026

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Which standard applies to what you are measuring

The same 15 standards, cut by accounting boundary rather than by publisher

Boundary	What it accounts for	Standards
Organisational	One organisation’s emissions over a reporting year	Agriculture & AFOLU Emissions Accounting (organisational scope; the same methods feed national inventories) GHG Protocol Corporate Standard: Scope 1, 2, 3 Guide GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard 2026 GHG Protocol Scope 1 / Stationary Combustion GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard ISO 14064-1:2018
Product	One product or service, across its life cycle	GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting & Reporting Standard
Project	One intervention, against a counterfactual baseline	ISO 14064-2 Project-Level GHG Accounting The GHG Protocol for Project Accounting
National	A country’s inventory, reported under the UNFCCC	IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National GHG Inventories IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 3 — Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU) IPCC 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
Verification	Whether a finished statement can be relied on	ISO 14064-3 Validation and Verification of GHG Statements
Outside inventory boundary	A comparative claim about an intervention — not an inventory boundary	WBCSD Avoided Emissions Guidance

The first five rows are inventory-accounting boundaries. The last is not: avoided-emissions guidance covers a comparative, intervention-based claim measured against a counterfactual, which sits outside an inventory rather than forming a sixth kind of one. Several standards are usable at more than one boundary; each is placed at the one it was written for.