SDAI Insights
Carbon accounting is separating inventories from intervention claims
Carbon accounting is moving toward a clearer distinction between three different questions: what emissions belong in an inventory, how two scenarios compare, and what change can credibly be attributed to an intervention.
Event date
Thesis
Carbon accounting is moving toward a clearer distinction between three different questions: what emissions belong in an inventory, how two scenarios compare, and what change can credibly be attributed to an intervention. Those questions are related, but they are not interchangeable. Software and analysis should stop presenting them as though they are.
What changed
On March 31, 2026, the GHG Protocol's Actions and Market Instruments workstream published its Phase 1 White Paper. The workstream is exploring a multi-statement approach to GHG reporting and methods that distinguish inventory accounting from claims about emissions impacts outside the inventory. The White Paper is exploratory rather than a draft final standard. Even so, it points to an important methodological direction: organizations may need to report different kinds of climate information without collapsing them into one emissions total.
Analysis
Many sustainability tools still put inventory emissions, avoided emissions, renewable-energy claims and scenario deltas on the same dashboard with similar visual weight. That makes fundamentally different quantities look comparable. A cleaner analytical structure keeps at least three layers separate: - Inventory: emissions assigned to an organization or product under a defined accounting method. - Scenario comparison: the modeled difference between two explicitly defined alternatives. - Intervention impact: an estimate of system change attributable to an action, often requiring additional causal or consequential assumptions. The distinction matters because each layer supports a different claim. A product footprint can describe attributable emissions under a specified method. A scenario model can show how two designs differ under common assumptions. Neither result, by itself, proves that choosing one option will cause an equivalent reduction in the wider system.
Engineering implications
This becomes especially important when LCA, TEA and operational models are used together. Consider flexible electrolysis. An attributional inventory may use a defined electricity mix to calculate a product footprint. A scenario analysis may compare several operating schedules. A consequential analysis may ask whether changing the operating schedule affects marginal generation and system emissions. All three can be useful. They answer different questions. The software should preserve that distinction in the data model, calculation labels and exported results rather than reducing everything to a single field called "emissions saved."
What to watch next
For any claimed reduction, a user should be able to see: - the inventory result, - the baseline, - the alternative, - the modeled difference, - the method used, - whether the result is attributional, comparative or consequential, - the key uncertainty and boundary assumptions. That structure would make the result easier to interpret and harder to overclaim.
Primary source
The AMI White Paper is exploratory rather than a final GHG Protocol requirement. Later consultations, Scope 2 revisions, and corporate-standard work may change the structure described here.
GHG Protocol, Actions and Market Instruments workstreamRelated work
See the research and case studies behind SDAI's technical analysis.