ISO and GHG Protocol launch working group for product-level standards

Call for experts comes as Exxon slams ‘flawed’ GHG Protocol in lawsuit and launches group to ‘bring financial-grade precision to emissions tracking’

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the GHG Protocol are looking for experts to work on a product-level GHG accounting standard. 

It is the first project launched under a strategic partnership the pair announced last month as they seek to coordinate their efforts.  

Members of the new working group, announced on Monday, will help to develop a standard “which is truly fit-for-purpose in line with the changing needs of corporates, investors and regulators,” they said in a statement. 

It will be based on the ISO 14067 standard and the GHG Protocol’s product lifecycle accounting and reporting standard, both of which already exist.

Bit more detail on the work that ISO is doing, linking back to your previous feature. 

It comes just days after ExxonMobil took aim at the GHG Protocol, describing it as a “flawed reporting standard”. 

In a lawsuit filed with a US court on Friday, the oil major railed against California’s climate disclosure rules, saying they would “force ExxonMobil to adopt the portions of the GHG Protocol it has declined to adopt in its voluntary reporting, such as the requirement to publish base-year emissions recalculations and the requirement to report the full range of Scope 3 emissions.”

Last week, Exxon teamed up with BASF, Bayer, Vale, Nucor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, AirLiquide and the infrastructure arm of investment titan BlackRock to launch a new project on carbon accounting.

Led by Amy Brachio, EY’s former global vice chair for sustainability, Carbon Measures will advocate for a “ledger-based carbon accounting framework” based on “sound science and the principles of financial accounting”. 

Exxon’s strategic energy leader, William Gaillard, described Carbon Measures as “bringing financial-grade precision to emissions tracking” and said it would close a “loophole” in current frameworks, which can “unintentionally reward companies for outsourcing or divesting their most polluting activities”. 

The deadline for applying to join the ISO and GHG Protocol working group is 30 November.