Reimagining Greenhouse Gas Disclosures

This briefing by RMI and the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency (COMET) proposes three changes to carbon accounting principles to better drive emissions reductions in supply chains. The authors argue that current corporate-level reporting is insufficient for procurement decisions and advocate for a shift toward product-level disclosure based on primary data, fixed boundaries for comparison, and market-driven measurement incentives.

• Current carbon accounting often relies on averages and assumptions from life-cycle inventory databases for Scope 3 emissions, which can lead to bias, manipulation, and greenwashing. To make emissions data actionable for procurement, companies should shift toward using primary data sourced directly from suppliers.
• The authors propose a shift from 'corporate boundaries'—which are defined by what a company owns—to 'fixed boundaries' based on all processes required to make a product. This approach enables meaningful comparisons between products and companies regardless of their corporate structure.
• Environmental product declarations (EPDs) and product category rules (PCRs) need to evolve to use asset-level primary data. If product definitions are too broad (e.g., averaging emissions across different global regions), they can remove the incentive for companies to invest in decarbonization in specific markets.
• The Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency (COMET) is developing a Framework in partnership with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This framework will provide sector-specific guidance for calculating Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and allow for the translation of emissions across asset, product, corporate, and national levels.
• The document identifies four distinct levels of emissions reporting: the asset level (manufacturing plants/industrial sites), the product level (specific products from an asset), the corporate level (multiple assets and operational emissions), and the national level (geographic boundaries used for tracking Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement).

APA

Cannon, C., & Wright, L. (2022). Reimagining Greenhouse Gas Disclosures. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2022/02/reimagining_greenhouse_gas_disclosures.pdf

Chicago

Cannon, Charles, and Lachlan Wright. Reimagining Greenhouse Gas Disclosures. RMI, 2022. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2022/02/reimagining_greenhouse_gas_disclosures.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Cannon |first1=Charles |last2=Wright |first2=Lachlan |title=Reimagining Greenhouse Gas Disclosures |publisher=RMI |date=January 2022 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2022/02/reimagining_greenhouse_gas_disclosures.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cannon2022reimagining, author = {Cannon, Charles and Wright, Lachlan}, title = {{Reimagining Greenhouse Gas Disclosures}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2022}, month = jan, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2022/02/reimagining_greenhouse_gas_disclosures.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }