The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol is the world’s most widely used standard for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions. First launched in 1998, it provides a consistent, transparent framework for companies, cities, and other entities to track emissions, set reduction targets, and disclose progress.
Our new GHG Protocol Insights Dashboard breaks down how the framework is used across industries, from the three scopes of emissions to the principles behind credible reporting, and models how corporate climate targets will shape future offset demand.
What is the GHG Protocol?
The GHG Protocol is a multi-stakeholder partnership convened by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
Its mission is to develop internationally accepted greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards and tools, and to promote their adoption to achieve a Net Zero emissions economy worldwide.
The Corporate Standard, a core part of the protocol, established the widely adopted “scopes” framework:
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Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources
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Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased energy
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Scope 3: All other indirect emissions in the value chain
What does the dashboard show?
Our GHG Protocol dashboard provides:
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An overview of the three scopes and their definitions
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The five key principles behind credible GHG reporting (Relevance, Accuracy, Completeness, Consistency, Transparency)
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Corporate emissions outlooks under different target types (NZT, SBTi, no target)
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Future offset demand forecasts, including a “Missed Targets” scenario where Scope 3 dominates demand
Projected 2050 offset demand by scope under the GHG Protocol ‘Missed Targets’ scenario
How we used AI to build it
The document reader, which currently contains around 1,400 unique corporate sustainability documents from 2019-2023, was used to search for the prevalence of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, or GHGP. This was performed across the reports of over 350 companies in the energy, financial services, and consumer goods sectors. The document reader was able to identify which companies had utilised the protocol, for which specific purposes (e.g. Scope 1 and 2 footprinting, categorisation of controllable versus non-controllable emissions), and with which standard.
It also provided relevant adjacent information, such as the use of specific ISO GHG accounting and verification standards, or guidance that companies may have taken from industry bodies like American Petroleum Institute (API).
As a result, we were able to identify over 250 companies that had in some way used the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, forming the basis of the comparative analysis visualised in the GHGP dashboard. This was a task that was condensed down into a matter of hours, in comparison to the weeks that it would have taken the team to go through each report manually. The sustainability document reader is currently only for internal purposes and is constantly undergoing refinement, but this piece of work presents a clear and exciting use case.
Why this matters?
The GHG Protocol underpins how thousands of companies worldwide measure, manage, and report their emissions. Understanding how it’s applied in practice can help reveal gaps, highlight leadership, and forecast the real-world impact of climate targets.
By combining our emissions data with AI-powered document analysis, we can surface insights faster and at greater scale, supporting more transparent, data-driven climate action.
Explore the GHG Protocol Dashboard
Subscribers can view the full dataset, charts, and company-level breakdowns in the AlliedOffsets platform.