Standards
Standards
GHG Protocol Corporate Standard
The world's most widely used framework for measuring corporate greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1, 2, and 3.
Standards
Carbon Impact Report
A document quantifying a business's Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in line with the GHG Protocol.
Scopes
Scopes
Scope 1 emissions
Direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the business, fuel, fleet, and refrigerants.
Scopes
Scope 2 emissions
Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heat, steam, or cooling consumed by the business.
Scopes
Scope 3 emissions
All indirect emissions across the business value chain, supply chain, travel, commuting, product use, and disposal.
Scopes
The 15 Scope 3 categories
The fifteen GHG Protocol categories of indirect value-chain emissions, from purchased goods to investments.
Methods & Data
Methods & Data
Activity-based data
Real consumption figures (kWh, litres, kg, km) used to calculate emissions accurately.
Methods & Data
Spend-based estimation
A method that infers emissions from financial spend rather than physical consumption, used as a last-resort fallback.
Methods & Data
Emissions factors
The conversion multiplier that turns physical activity (kWh, litres, kg) into greenhouse gas emissions in tCO₂e.
Methods & Data
Operational control
The GHG Protocol consolidation approach where a company reports 100% of emissions from operations it controls.
Methods & Data
Organisational boundaries
The rules that decide which entities and operations are included in a company's GHG inventory.
Methods & Data
Location-based vs market-based method
Two parallel methods for reporting Scope 2 electricity emissions: grid average vs contractual instruments.
Methods & Data
REGO
A UK certificate proving electricity was generated from renewable sources, used in market-based Scope 2 reporting.
Methods & Data
Data quality
How reliably emissions data has been measured, tiered from primary activity data to modelled estimates.
Compliance
Compliance
PPN 006 / Carbon Reduction Plan
The UK Government policy requiring suppliers on major public contracts to publish a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan.
Compliance
Net zero
Cutting emissions as close to zero as possible and balancing the residual through permanent removals.
Compliance
Base year and restatement
The reference year for tracking reductions, plus the recalculation that follows structural change.
Compliance
Assurance and verification
Independent third-party reviews that confirm reported emissions are accurate, complete, and consistent.
Concepts
Concepts
tCO₂e
The standard unit for greenhouse gas emissions, converting every gas into its equivalent warming impact in tonnes of CO₂.
Concepts
Well-to-tank (WTT)
Upstream emissions from extracting, refining, and transporting fuels before they are burned.
Concepts
T&D losses
Electricity lost as it moves through the grid from generators to consumers, reported under Scope 3 Category 3.
Concepts
Global Warming Potential (GWP)
A measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps relative to CO₂, used to convert all gases into a common tCO₂e unit.
Concepts
Materiality
The principle of focusing measurement on emissions that are large, high-risk, or important to stakeholders.
Concepts
Emissions intensity
Emissions expressed per unit of business output (per £m revenue, per FTE, per unit produced) for like-for-like comparison.
Concepts
Tonne-kilometre (tonne-km)
The unit for measuring freight transport: one tonne of goods moved one kilometre.