GHG Protocol

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The GHG Protocol ( Greenhouse Gas Protocol ) is a private, transnational standard series for accounting for greenhouse gas emissions ( carbon accounting ) and the associated reporting for companies and increasingly for the public sector. The development of the GHG Protocol is coordinated by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

The standards of the GHG Protocol are mostly linked to those of the international climate policy regime and close regulatory loopholes that have not yet been filled by the state. The GHG Protocol is the most widely used standard for creating greenhouse gas balances . Numerous other standards are based on it, including ISO 14064 and many government corporate standards.

development

The initiative to develop the GHG Protocol came from the World Resources Institute (WRI), a think tank on environmental protection, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a business association on sustainable development. It was triggered by discussions in these organizations and in cooperating companies, for example British Petroleum and General Motors , in the 1990s about how companies deal with their greenhouse gas emissions and how they should record and report them in a standardized manner.

In 1997, WRI and WBCSD agreed to work with non-governmental organizations to set up an initiative to standardize carbon accounting methods from 1998 onwards. The development of the standard was steered by a body in which non-governmental organizations such as the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, The Energy Research Institute and companies such as Norsk Hydro , Tokyo Electric and Shell are involved were.

In 2001 the initiative published the first version of a company standard. In the years that followed, a number of guidelines and tools were developed that were intended to facilitate standard-compliant recording and reporting. After a test phase in 30 companies, a revised version of the company standard was published in 2004. In 2006 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) used the company standard as the basis for its ISO 14064-I: Specification with Guidance at the Organization Level for Quantification and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals.

According to the GHG Protocol team from 2016, more than 1000 companies and other organizations have developed methods for taking stock of their greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the GHG Protocol since the first version was published . In 2008, around 60% of Fortune Global 500 companies used the standard, in 2017 it was more than 90%. Companies in developing countries are also increasingly using the GHG standard; here he is helping to establish national reporting systems. The GHG Protocol is the most important and most common standard for recording greenhouse gas emissions at company level. , P. 36

organization

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) come together in the so-called GHG Protocol Initiative to - depending on the area of ​​application, together with other private or state organizations - to draft, further develop and promote the standards. Employees of the WBCSD and the WRI form the GHG Protocol Team of around 10 employees who coordinate further development, conduct public relations and support users.

The work is mainly financed by large, international corporations, including automotive companies and energy companies. But also individual government initiatives such as the International Climate Initiative or one of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) are among the sponsors.

Standards

Under the umbrella of the GHG Protocol , standard programs were set up for various actors: The company standard was followed, among other things, by standards for greenhouse gas inventories by municipalities, supplemented by standards for climate protection projects, for life cycle-based product emissions and for national and regional climate protection goals and, associated with this, for estimating the climate impact more politically Activities.

General

The GHG Protocol is based, similar to the principles of proper accounting in accounting, on basic principles of relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency and accuracy. It records the greenhouse gases regulated under the Kyoto Protocol : carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), fluorocarbons (PFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6 ) and nitrogen trifluoride ( NF 3 ).

Accounting limits

When introducing the standard, the accounting period and organizational boundaries must first be defined. In the case of affiliated entities, e.g. subsidiaries or joint ventures, companies can set the limits either on the basis of ownership shares ( equity share approach ) or the control approach . With the equity share approach , the organization is allocated the greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the share it holds; with the control approach, the full emissions if it exercises control, otherwise none. Only the control approach is relevant for the public sector . For regional authorities, their geographical boundaries are decisive.

Within the organizational boundaries, the emission sources are identified that are under company control when the service is provided. In the case of companies, this can be, for example, the vehicle fleet, gas heating systems, cooling devices or company-owned power plants. The greenhouse gases emitted from these sources constitute the direct emissions . All other emissions that come from sources outside the limits are called indirect emissions . Emissions from own sources can be measured or, what is more common, estimated based on consumption and emission factors.

Scopes of emissions

Similar to comparable standards, GHG Protocol standards further distinguish three areas ( scopes ) to which emissions can be assigned:

Scope 1
all direct emissions, ie from sources within the limits
Scope 2
the indirect emissions from electricity, steam, heating and cooling generated and purchased outside
Scope 3
all other indirect emissions, including those from the manufacture, transport of purchased goods or the distribution and use of own products or the disposal of waste; emissions from business travel are also included

While the GHG Protocol obliges its users to record Scope 1 and 2 emissions, companies are free to record Scope 3 emissions. The recording of Scope 3 emissions from municipalities is largely not covered by the standard.

Calculation of emissions from consumption and activities

In most cases, emissions are not measured, but calculated based on consumption. The conversion of recorded consumption takes place with the help of so-called emission factors : For each fuel or activity, emission factors are applied for the various greenhouse gases released. The calculation tools of the GHG Protocol suggest the values ​​of the IPCC for national greenhouse gas inventories. This gives you quantities of the greenhouse gases released.

The climate impact of the emitted greenhouse gases (GHG) is then uniformly as global warming potential ( Global Warming Potential indicated indicated GWP) of carbon dioxide equivalent mass that would help more than 100 years in about the same amount to global warming. Unit is usually tons of CO 2 equivalent (t CO 2 -eq). Activities that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, such as planting additional forests, can have negative global warming potential.

Example for the calculation based on fuel consumption (stationary heating, natural gas):

Fuel quantity → per GHG: GHG mass = fuel quantity × fuel emission factor , GHG → sum (GHG mass × GWP GHG ):

1600 m 3 natural gas → 302 kg CO 2 , 269 g CH 4 , 5 g N 2 O → 303 kg CO 2 -eq

Example for the calculation of an activity (1000 km drive by car):

Distance → per GHG: GHG mass = distance × emission factor activity, GHG → sum (GHG mass × GWP GHG ):

1000 km → 234 kg CO 2 , 44 g CH 4 , 40 g N 2 O → 255 kg CO 2 -eq

Role in carbon management

The creation of a greenhouse gas inventory based on the GHG Protocol standards for companies or municipalities is usually a step in a so-called carbon management process: After the initial accounting, i.e. H. the creation of a basic greenhouse gas inventory and the formulation of emission reduction targets, climate protection measures are identified and implemented, and annually updated inventories are used to check the extent to which the targets have been achieved or whether improvements are necessary.

Corporate standard

The first and most important standard of the GHG Protocol is the Corporate Standard , which is used for accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in companies and other organizations. It is supplemented by the Project Protocol , with which projects to reduce emissions can be assessed, by a guideline on the particularly difficult to record Scope 3 emissions outside the company, a guideline for recording the life cycle emissions of products, which also includes recording supported by Scope 3 emissions, and various calculation tools.

Industry associations, including the International Aluminum Institute , the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations, and the WBCSD Cement Sustainability Initiative , developed additional, sector-specific tools and guidelines. , P. 3

For various reasons, companies account for and report in accordance with the GHG Protocol :

  • to entrepreneurial climate risks to identify and manage
  • to identify potentially cost-effective climate protection measures (see Porter hypothesis ),
  • to participate in voluntary climate protection initiatives and thus, for example, to develop climate-friendly investments or because you want to present yourself as a responsible company and hope to improve your image,
  • to participate in emissions trading systems,
  • because they are subject to government accounting and reporting obligations or want to prepare in anticipation of such obligations.

The corporate standard was widely accepted. According to the GHG Protocol team, more than 90% of Fortune Global 500 companies used it in 2017 . Interest is, however, subject to fluctuations: Overall, according to the assessment of scientists and those involved in standardization, the use of the GHG Protocol standard depends to a large extent on the expectations of future climate policy. The prospect of effective climate protection and market mechanisms to reduce emissions prompts companies to prepare by implementing the GHG Protocol .

After the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 , which was considered to have failed , interest in cooperation with the GHG initiative decreased significantly, especially in carbon-intensive sectors. According to Thierry Berthoud, former Managing Director of the WBCSD, companies shy away from the complex recording and management of their emissions if there are no clear, long-term political framework conditions and price signals. After Copenhagen, companies persisted in a wait-and-see attitude; after the Paris Agreement in 2016, interest increased again.

Many companies hesitate to publish all of their Scope 3 emissions from their supply chains. Scientists suspect that companies expect significant costs to reduce these emissions and that the quality of information therefore suffers. The Carbon Disclosure Project fears that as a result the company figures could offer a misleading picture. According to political scientist Thomas Hickmann, there is no clear incentive for international climate policy here.

Standards for local authorities

The World Resources Institute as well as the city networks C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability created a standard for municipalities and other geographically definable sub-national units, the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories -Standard (GPC). With its help, these regional authorities can create a greenhouse gas inventory, set themselves reduction targets and monitor compliance with them. It should also be possible to aggregate the inventories into regional and national inventories.

After a test phase in 2013 and some changes, the standard was published in December 2014. It is the successor to the International Local Government Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis Protocol ( community section ) of ICLEI from 2009 as well as the International Standard for Determining Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Cities , which was developed by the World Bank , the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and UN- HABITAT was published in 2010. Cities that belong to the Covenant of Mayors , including, for example, Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Vienna or Zurich, have committed to drawing up emissions balances in accordance with the GPC standard.

Emissions resulting from activities in municipalities are recorded in six categories:

  • Stationary energy (mainly from the local consumption of fossil fuels)
  • transport
  • disposal
  • Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU)
  • Agriculture, forestry, other land use (AFOLU)
  • any other emissions that arise outside the corporation's geographic boundaries as a result of activities within the boundaries

Cities can record their emissions at a basic level, called BASIC - this includes those from the categories of stationary energy and transport (Scope 1 and 2) and disposal (here also Scope 3). The more demanding BASIC + level also includes the other categories, including transport across regional boundaries (Scope 3).

In addition to the GPC accounting standard, standards for climate protection goals and measures were also drawn up as part of the GHG Protocol . The Mitigation Goal Standard (2014) aims to help national and sub-national actors to set climate protection goals, to monitor their fulfillment and to report on them. The complementary Policy and Action Standard aims at specific climate protection measures.

Reporting requirements and publication

Various countries, such as France, Great Britain or Australia, have introduced mandatory or voluntary reports according to the GHG Protocol . In France, for example, companies with more than 500 employees, public bodies with more than 250 employees and districts with more than 50,000 inhabitants are required to report.

Greenhouse gas balances of individual actors are collected in so-called Greenhouse Gas Registries (GHG Registries, greenhouse gas registries) and published ( Carbon Disclosure ). Here - depending on the addressee of the registry - the public, investors or authorities can obtain information. Almost all GHG registries that are not the basis for emissions trading offer reporting according to the GHG Protocol standards.

The Global Reporting Initiative , which develops guidelines for corporate sustainability reports , recommends reporting on greenhouse gas emissions using the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard . The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which maintains a greenhouse gas registry in the form of a public database, has also been recommending that companies prepare emissions reports using the GHG Protocol since its fifth annual reporting round (2007) .

In an evaluation of the CDP reports of the mining and metalworking industries from Australasia , which reached up to 2009 , less than 30% of the companies asked had submitted emissions reports , only three companies used the GHG Protocol , so that the GHG Protocol aimed for better comparability of company data was not given at this time. This is one reason why, according to the authors, the disclosed emissions information is difficult to interpret, even for institutional decision-makers.

The GHG Protocol strives for the aggregation ability of reported data. However, it is possible that the same emissions are recorded by different companies, which means that there is double recording. Data according to the GHG Protocol are therefore only suitable to a limited extent for the creation of aggregated, national emissions balances.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h T. Hickmann: Voluntary global business initiatives and the international climate negotiations: A case study of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol . In: Journal of Cleaner Production . 2017, doi : 10.1016 / j.jclepro.2017.06.183 .
  2. ↑ as an explicit goal, for example in the Mitigation Goal Standard , p. 6
  3. ↑ a b c C. Kauffmann, C. Tébar Less and D. Teichmann: Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emission Reporting: A Stocktaking of Government Schemes (=  OECD Working Papers on International Investment . No. 2012/01 ). 2012, doi : 10.1787 / 5k97g3x674lq-en .
  4. ↑ Sven Bode: Accounting for greenhouse gas emissions: Proposals for the Federal Environment Ministry against the background of the climate protection goals of the Federal Republic of Germany . Short study on behalf of the BMU as part of the project "Scientific analyzes of current climate policy issues" (UM 10 41 949). July 2011 ( arrhenius.de [PDF; 434 kB ]).
  5. ↑ a b About Us. GHG Protocol, accessed November 6, 2017 .
  6. ↑ a b c World Resources Institute and World Business Council on Sustainable Development (Ed.): A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard . 2015 ( ghgprotocol.org [PDF; 3.7 MB ]).
  7. ↑ a b c d e World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability (Ed.): Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories . 2014, ISBN 1-56973-846-7 ( ghgprotocol.org [PDF; 6.1 MB ]).
  8. ^ A b John Matthew and Defne Apul Franchetti: Carbon Footprint Analysis: Concepts, Methods, Implementation, and Case Studies . June 2012, Chapter 5: GHG Protocol.
  9. ↑ Emission Factor Database (EGDB). IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, accessed November 7, 2017 .
  10. ↑ calculated with the GHG Stationary Combustion Tool, Version 4.1, for the “Institutional” sector, decimal places rounded
  11. ↑ calculated with the GHG transport tool, version 2.6, Scope 1 emissions from road traffic (USA) according to the distance traveled with the vehicle type "Passenger Car - Gasoline - Year 1984–1993"
  12. ↑ World Resources Institute and World Business Council on Sustainable Development (Eds.): Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard: Supplement to the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard . 2011 ( ghgprotocol.org [PDF]).
  13. ^ GHG Protocol for Cities. In: Greenhouse Gas protocol. Retrieved November 6, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Full Guide. (PDF) Compact of Mayors, accessed November 7, 2017 .
  15. ↑ World Resources Institute (Ed.): Mitigation Goal Standard: An accounting and reporting standard for national and subnational greenhouse gas reduction goals . 1 Introduction ( ghgprotocol.org [PDF; 3.8 MB ]).
  16. ↑ Jessica F. Green: Private Standards in the Climate Regime: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol . In: Business and Politics . tape 12 , no. 3 , 2010, doi : 10.2202 / 1469-3569.1318 .
  17. ↑ Jane Andrew and Corinne L. Cortese: Carbon Disclosures: Comparability, the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol . In: Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal . tape 5 , no. 4 , 2011.