Accounting for Impact

This insight brief from RMI discusses the need for corporate carbon accounting to shift from the simple assignment of emissions toward consequential accounting methods that assess the actual real-world impact of climate actions and business models.

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for more ambitious reduction actions and near-term goals to limit warming to 1.5°C.
• Current corporate carbon accounting focuses primarily on the assignment of emissions rather than the impact of climate actions, leading to skepticism regarding the real-world effectiveness of some novel business models used for emissions reduction.
• Consequential accounting methods are important for incentivizing and evaluating a company's emissions reduction efforts and for showing progress toward climate targets.

APA

RMI (2023). Accounting for Impact. https://rmi.org/resources/accounting-for-impact/

Chicago

RMI. Accounting for Impact. 2023. https://rmi.org/resources/accounting-for-impact/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Accounting for Impact |date=9 February 2023 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/accounting-for-impact/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2023accounting, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Accounting for Impact}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2023}, month = feb, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/accounting-for-impact/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }