Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Carbon Footprint of Products – International Standards for Assessment, Reporting and Verification

The recent UN Climate Change Conference, COP 29 emphasised the importance of transparent climate reporting, calling on companies to apply standardised disclosure practices. In the context of the global climate agenda, relevance of quantifying and verifying of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon footprint of products (CFP) continues to grow due to the need for alignment with the Paris Agreement and compliance with national legislative requirements, cross-border carbon regulations, requirements of foreign exchanges, investors and partners, as well as requests for disclosure of non-financial reporting on sustainable development, etc. All GHG prevention and reduction initiatives are based on the quantitative assessment, monitoring, reporting and verification of GHG emissions and/or removals.

In this regard, adherence to generally accepted international standards for climate reporting is of great importance. The ISO 14060 family of GHG standards, like the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standards in other areas, are internationally recognised quality specifications, providing transparency and consistency in quantification, monitoring, reporting and verification or validation of GHG emissions and removals.

ISO 14064-1 specifies requirements for the development of a GHG inventory, definition of boundaries, quantification of GHG emissions and removals, documentation of procedures for GHG collection and information management, assessment of uncertainties, GHG reporting and report content. Information on practical application of ISO 14064-1 is detailed in ISO/TR 14069. ISO 14064-2 applies to greenhouse gas projects.

ISO 14067 defines requirements for a CFP quantification and reporting, related to stages of the product life cycle, from resource extraction and raw material processing to production, use and end-of-life. The standard refers to the related standards ISO 14044 and ISO 14040 on life cycle assessment, as well as to the guidance on their practical application ISO/TS 14049.

ISO 14064-3 details requirements for verification of GHG statements related to GHG inventories, GHG projects and CFP, whereas ISO 14065 specifies requirements for GHG validation and verification bodies, and ISO 14066 defines competence requirements for GHG validation and verification teams.

Environ Consult specialists have a long track of successfully applying of international requirements and approaches to assessing GHG emissions (including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol - GHG Protocol), as this is an integral part of environmental and social impact assessment of projects with international financing (in accordance with the Equator Principles, IFC, EBRD, etc.).

Our competencies include inventory and calculation of GHG emissions and removals and carbon footprint of products and reporting in line with the ISO 14060 family of standards. Our Company expert has recently received the certificate in international standards ISO 14064 "Specification with guidance at the organisation level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removal" and ISO 14067 "Requirements and guidelines for quantification of the carbon footprint of products" based on the results of the upgrade training conducted by TUV Austria Standards & Compliance, the leading international GHG verifier and validator.

The full list of our climate change competencies can be found here: Greenhouse gases and climate change.