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Emission Scopes & GHG Protocol

Published by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the GHG Protocol is the international reference standard for ISO 14064, the CSRD and extra-financial reporting. It structures carbon accounting for analysing any environmental inventory, particularly in the digital sector.

01

One shared standard, five distinct documents

The GHG Protocol is not a single text but a family of standards published since 2001, each covering a precise use. Knowing them avoids comparing inventories built under different rules, a frequent error in trajectory analysis.

Corporate Standard (2001/2004)

The pillar of the whole family: it sets out the principles for accounting and reporting emissions at company level, the split between Scope 1, 2 and 3, and the consolidation rules. Every regulatory disclosure connects back to it, directly or indirectly.

Scope 2 Guidance (2015)

Refines the calculation of emissions from purchased electricity, heat and steam, introducing dual reporting under both the location-based and the market-based method. This is the document that frames current debates on renewable energy accounting.

Corporate Value Chain (2011)

Details the fifteen categories of indirect value chain emissions, upstream and downstream. It is by far the heaviest item for most companies, and the hardest to measure precisely.

Two further standards complete the set: the Product Life Cycle Standard, which applies the same logic to a product and its life cycle, and the Project Protocol, which governs the accounting of emission reductions from a given project, the basis of offsetting mechanisms. For a digital service, the Product Life Cycle Standard applies to a piece of software or a platform, while the Corporate Standard governs the inventory of the company operating them.

The GHG Protocol has been under major revision since 2022: updates to the Corporate Standard and to the Scope 2 Guidance are expected progressively, and could change several rules currently in force, in particular on the market-based method and on hourly matching. The final publications will shape the next iterations of the ESRS E1 standards.

02

Consolidate before counting

Before assigning an emission to a Scope, the company must decide which entities are included in the inventory. The GHG Protocol offers three approaches, and the choice drives both the published total and the split across Scopes.

01

Operational control

The company consolidates 100% of the emissions of the facilities over which it has operational control, meaning those where it decides and implements operating policies. This is the approach most frequently used in practice, not least because it matches the perimeter the company can actually act on.

02

Financial control

The company consolidates 100% of the emissions of the entities whose financial risks and rewards it bears, regardless of operational control. A common approach for groups holding interests they do not manage directly, such as investment holdings.

03

Equity share

The company consolidates emissions in proportion to its equity stake in each entity. A minority approach, used mainly in sectors structured around joint ventures such as oil and gas or mining.

The choice of consolidation is not neutral: a shared entity can move from Scope 1 (operational control) to Scope 3 (financial control) without any change in physical emissions. An alternative method does not measure the same data differently, it produces an entirely new data point. Any trajectory analysis therefore requires verifying that the organisational boundary has remained constant from one reporting year to the next.

03

Three scopes, one accounting system

The distinction between the three Scopes is the foundation of the whole standard. It rests on the physical source of the emission and on the company's relationship to that source, not on moral responsibility or end use.

What the company burns or emits itself.

Greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company: stationary combustion (boilers, generators), mobile combustion (owned vehicle fleets), fugitive emissions (refrigerant leaks from air conditioning and liquid-cooled servers) and process emissions (rarely relevant in service sectors).

IT example

Refrigerant leaks from a private machine room fall under Scope 1. The electricity powering that same room sits in Scope 2, and the hardware filling it in Scope 3.

This hierarchy explains why the CSRD now requires the publication of material Scope 3 sub-categories, on top of the Scope 1 and Scope 2 totals.

04

The detail that changes how the inventory reads

The Corporate Value Chain Standard splits Scope 3 into 8 upstream categories and 7 downstream ones. Not all are relevant to every company, but all must be examined and documented, including to justify exclusion. Here is the full list with, for each, the most frequent example in a corporate context.

Upstream

Downstream

The weight of emissions varies by sector. The materiality rule allows focus on the major items, provided every category has first been assessed to validate that choice, a step now made mandatory by the CSRD.

05

The terms that cause confusion

06

Carbon inventory details

The information system is nowhere named explicitly in the GHG Protocol, which describes general accounting applicable to any activity. Its footprint nonetheless appears across all three Scopes, and above all in several Scope 3 categories whose reading is not immediate.

Scope 1

Refrigerant leaks from private facilities, backup generators.

A marginal item by volume but sometimes volatile, given the high global warming potential of the fluids used. A 10 kilogram leak of R-410A is equivalent to more than 20 tonnes of CO₂e.

Scope 2

Electricity consumed by private data centres, server rooms and workstations powered from company sites.

Dual method mandatory. A data centre in France can show a zero market-based footprint (guarantees of origin) while consuming location-based electricity at 40 gCO₂e/kWh. Both figures are true and both must be published.

Scope 3 category 1 (Purchased goods and services)

Public Cloud spend, software as a service, managed services, hosting.

The Cloud provider's entire Scope 1, 2 and upstream Scope 3 becomes your category 1. Its Scope 2 accounting method therefore propagates mechanically into your inventory, without you having arbitrated it.

Scope 3 category 2 (Capital goods)

Servers, workstations, mobile devices, network equipment, audiovisual hardware.

Fully accounted for in the year of purchase, not amortised over the useful life. A large fleet refresh can double this category in one year without any environmental decision being made.

Scope 3 category 4 (Upstream transport)

Delivery of purchased equipment, in particular hardware imported from Asia.

An item often overlooked but not negligible, in particular for light hardware carried by air freight.

Scope 3 category 5 (Waste)

End of life of the company's IT hardware, when handled by a third party.

Recycling does not cancel upstream emissions: it recovers a fraction of them, varying by material, and comes as a last resort after reuse.

Scope 3 category 8 (Upstream leased assets)

Offices and data centres whose technical facilities are outside the company's operational control.

Covers colocation space in particular, where operations stay with the host but electricity consumption is attributable to the tenant.

Scope 3 category 11 (Use of sold products)

Energy consumption of the software and digital services used by the company's customers.

The dominant item for software vendors and digital service providers. A vendor sees in this category the energy consumed by all of its customers running its product.

Scope 3 category 15 (Investments)

Emissions financed by the investment portfolio.

No direct link with IT, but the dominant category for banks and insurers, including for their IT departments, which weigh almost nothing beside it.

This split explains why a digital inventory read through Scope 2 alone underestimates the real footprint by a factor of 5 to 10, and why comparing two digital companies requires checking which of them actually publish every relevant category. The useful work is not choosing a Scope, it is building the chain that produces all three defensibly.

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