GHG reporting software: the mechanics
Every platform on this market sells the same promise. The useful question is narrower: does it implement the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, the 2004 document that UK SRS S2 names by title and year at paragraph 29(a)(ii) [1] [32].
This page works through what that standard requires, requirement by requirement, and turns each one into something you can ask a vendor to show you on a screen. It is not a ranking. The fuller vendor comparison lives on the carbon reporting software page.
What GHG reporting software actually has to do
Not dashboards. A number that survives being restated, and an audit trail that explains why it moved.
Almost every page on this subject compares features. Features are the easy part: any competent product can multiply an activity figure by an emission factor and draw a chart. The hard part is what happens eighteen months later, when the emission factor has been revised, an operating company has been sold, and somebody wants to know whether last year’s reduction was real.
The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard puts that requirement in an accounting principle rather than a technical annex. Its transparency principle reads, in full: “Address all relevant issues in a factual and coherent manner, based on a clear audit trail” [1]. That is a data-architecture requirement written into a principle of accounting, and it is the single sentence that separates a reporting tool from a spreadsheet with a logo on it.
Everything else on this page is that argument in detail, worked through the documents themselves. If you would rather start from the procurement end — budgets, shortlists, implementation time and the platforms themselves — the carbon reporting software comparison is the page for that, and it reviews seventeen platforms. This one is about what any of them must be able to do before the comparison is worth having.
A greenhouse gas figure is only as good as the record of how it was made. Software that stores the answer and not the working cannot restate a base year, cannot survive assurance, and cannot tell a definitional change apart from a decarbonisation trend.
Photo: Unsplash / Paula Prekopova
GHG accounting software implements a standard written in 2004
Amended twice, cited by name in UK law’s voluntary standard, and currently being rewritten from scratch.
The document is The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, Revised Edition, published by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in March 2004 [1]. It has been amended twice in twenty-two years: the February 2013 amendment added nitrogen trifluoride to the gases that must be accounted for [3], and the January 2015 Scope 2 Guidance rewrote how purchased energy is accounted for [4].
The five principles, in the standard’s own words
Scope 3 is described as optional, in the text UK SRS S2 names
This is the fact most likely to surprise a buyer who has been reading vendor material, and it is checkable in four lines of Chapter 4. The standard defines the three scopes as follows — verbatim [1]:
Scope 1 — “Direct GHG emissions occur from sources that are owned or controlled by the company.”
Scope 2 — “GHG emissions from the generation of purchased electricity consumed by the company.”
Scope 3 — “An optional reporting category that allows for the treatment of all other indirect emissions.”
GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, Revised Edition, Chapter 4 — “Setting Operational Boundaries”, 2004Two things follow, and both are worth being exact about. Scope 3 became a required part of an inventory only through the separate Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard of 2011 [5], which is a different document with its own conformance requirements; and it is proposed to become mandatory in the consolidated standard now in draft [12] — a proposal, in a progress update, not a rule. Anyone telling you “the GHG Protocol requires Scope 3” is compressing three documents and a draft into one sentence.
The second follows from the same paragraph: Scope 2 in the 2004 text covers purchased electricity only. Steam, heat and cooling were folded in explicitly by the 2015 Guidance. A tool that treats district heating as Scope 2 is right, but it is right because of the amendment, not the base standard.
Six gases, then seven
The 2004 Revised Edition covers six gases: CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, HFCs, PFCs and SF₆. Nitrogen trifluoride was added by the February 2013 amendment, which requires companies to “account for and report the emissions of all the GHGs required by the UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol” and lists all seven [3]. GHG Protocol’s own landing page says the standard covers seven gases without noting that the seventh arrived nine years later — true of the standard as amended, not of the 2004 document. If your software’s gas list stops at six, it is implementing the unamended text.
Chapter 9 — the list that is really a software specification
Chapter 9 sets out what a public GHG emissions report shall contain. Read as a procurement document rather than an accounting one, it is the most useful page in the standard, because at least four of its nine required elements are things a tool either models or cannot produce at all [2].
Three of those elements are worth pausing on, because they are the ones tools most often get wrong. Gross totals independent of any GHG trades means offsets and allowances cannot be netted into a scope total — they belong in a separate ledger, and Chapter 9 lists them among the optional information. Biogenic CO₂ reported separately from the scopes means a tool that folds biomass combustion into Scope 1 is producing a non-conforming figure. And the base-year recalculation policy is a stored decision, not a calculation — which brings us, later, to the fact that there is no numeric threshold to store.
If you want the standard itself explained rather than its software consequences, the GHG Protocol page covers the framework, and the scopes page defines the three categories with worked examples.
Photo: Unsplash / Alexander Abero
Who is inside the number, and on what basis
The boundary is a software configuration, not a policy PDF. Getting it wrong changes every figure downstream and nothing on the dashboard.
Chapter 3 of the Corporate Standard sets organisational boundaries, and offers a company equity share or control. A company choosing control then chooses financial control or operational control. That nesting matters, and most summaries flatten it into three parallel options [1].
The choice is not cosmetic. A group with material joint ventures reports a materially different Scope 1 under equity share than under operational control, and the difference is not an error in either case. What the standard requires is that you state which approach you chose — it is the first item in Chapter 9’s required list — and apply it consistently.
The UK SRS S2 requirement that defeats spreadsheets
UK SRS S2 adds a requirement the Corporate Standard does not have. Paragraph 29(a)(iv) requires an entity, for Scope 1 and Scope 2, to disaggregate emissions between “the consolidated accounting group” and “other investees excluded from paragraph 29(a)(iv)(1)” — associates, joint ventures and unconsolidated subsidiaries [32].
That is a requirement about the accounting boundary, not about emission factors, and it is the one that separates a tool with an entity model from a tool with a site list. You cannot produce it by tagging facilities. You produce it by knowing, for each source of emissions, which legal entity owns it and how that entity is treated in the consolidated accounts.
The checker below runs that logic against the standard’s own definitions. Nothing is sent anywhere; the whole thing runs in your browser.
Which entities land inside your inventory?
Pick a consolidation approach and a relationship, and the checker works out what goes in, on what basis, and what UK SRS S2 forces you to split out.
Answer for one investee at a time. A group with several relationships should run it once for each, because the approach applies uniformly but the outcome does not.
The output is an account of what two published documents require: Chapter 3 of the Corporate Standard for the consolidation basis, and UK SRS S2 paragraph 29(a)(iv) for the disaggregation. It is not advice about your accounts.
Photo: Unsplash / Zbynek Burival
GHG emissions software and the Scope 2 that is not one number
The 2015 Guidance made Scope 2 a pair. Half the market still reports a single figure and does not say which one it is.
The Scope 2 Guidance of January 2015 is described by GHG Protocol as “the most significant amendment to the Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard since its inception” [4]. Because it is an amendment, its requirements are requirements of the Corporate Standard — which means they are requirements of UK SRS S2, which names that standard.
“Companies with any operations in markets providing product or supplier-specific data in the form of contractual instruments shall report scope 2 emissions in two ways and label each result according to the method: one based on the location-based method, and one based on the market-based method.”
“If companies only have operations in markets without product or supplier-specific data, then only one scope 2 result shall be reported, based on the location-based method.”
GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, section 1.5.1 and Table 1.1, WRI/WBCSD, January 2015Both halves matter, and the second is almost never quoted. Market-based reporting is not universally required. A company with no contractual instruments reports one number, and a platform that forces a market-based figure into an empty market is producing a number the standard did not ask for. The methods themselves are defined tightly:
The eight quality criteria
All contractual instruments used in the market-based method shall meet eight criteria. The first five are quoted here from GHG Protocol’s own executive summary; criteria six to eight are set out in prose below because they were read from two concordant reproductions of Table 7.1 rather than from the Guidance PDF itself, and this page marks that difference rather than hiding it.
Criterion 3 is the one that turns a procurement fact into a software fact. An instrument must be tracked and redeemed, retired, or cancelled on your behalf. In the UK that instrument is the REGO, issued and redeemed through Ofgem’s register [55] — and a REGO conveys an attribute claim, not an emissions reduction, so it is not a carbon offset. A certificate you have bought but not retired is not evidence of anything, and a platform that lets you enter “100% renewable” as a percentage rather than as retired instruments with identifiers cannot demonstrate criterion 3 to an assurer.
The UK has no official residual mix — and that is not a gap in your software
The market-based method needs a factor for whatever electricity you did not claim with instruments. That is the residual mix. In the UK, there is no official one.
The AIB does publish a Great Britain figure, and it is the de facto convention because it is the only published GB residual-mix intensity. But the AIB says so itself: “the official residual mixes for each country are in principle published by the respective national authorities” [49], and no UK authority adopts it. Ofgem operates a fuel mix disclosure regime, which is a different instrument [50].
What that means for a buyer is specific: ask to see the disclosure, not the number. A platform that silently substitutes a grid average for a residual mix has made an accounting choice on your behalf and left no record of it.
How many Scope 2 numbers must you report?
One question about your market, one about your instruments, and the Guidance answers it — including the disclosure most UK reporters owe.
The checker computes from section 1.5.1 and the eight quality criteria, and adds the UK SRS S2 paragraph 29(a)(v) overlay where it applies. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Read the verdict as an account of what two documents require of a disclosure. It is not a calculation of your emissions and it is not advice.
Photo: Unsplash / Nikola Jovanović
Greenhouse gas reporting software and the 15 Scope 3 categories
Fifteen categories, each with a minimum boundary. Report by category or you have not reported.
The Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard, published September 2011, is a separate document from the Corporate Standard and carries its own requirements [5]. Two of them, from Table 3.1, verbatim:
“Companies shall account for all scope 3 emissions and disclose and justify any exclusions.”
“Companies shall account for emissions from each scope 3 category according to the minimum boundaries listed in table 5.4.”
Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard, Table 3.1, WRI/WBCSD, September 2011The categories are numbered and named, and the names are part of the standard. Category 3 in particular carries a parenthetical that vendors routinely drop — and the parenthetical is what stops it double-counting Scopes 1 and 2.
Minimum boundary is the concept that makes the categories tractable
Without a boundary rule, tracing a value chain runs indefinitely: your supplier’s supplier’s supplier. Table 5.4 fixes that. Its stated purpose, verbatim: it “identifies the minimum boundaries of each scope 3 category in order to standardize the boundaries of each category and help companies understand which activities should be accounted for” [5]. Going beyond the minimum boundary is optional; falling short of it is an exclusion, and exclusions must be disclosed and justified.
For software this is a schema question, not a calculation question. A tool that models Scope 3 as one bucket cannot state which categories it includes, cannot record an exclusion with a justification, and therefore cannot produce a disclosure that satisfies either the 2011 standard or UK SRS S2 paragraph 29(a)(vi)(1) — which requires an entity to disclose the categories included in its measure, by reference to that standard’s own list [32].
Specificity is not accuracy — and the Protocol says so
Almost every platform on this market sells the same upgrade path: get off spend-based estimates, onto supplier-specific data, and your Scope 3 gets better. The Scope 3 Technical Guidance says something more careful, and it says it in a box:
“Even though the supplier-specific and hybrid methods are more specific to the individual supplier than the average-data and spend-based methods, they may not produce results that are a more accurate reflection of the product’s contribution to the reporting company’s scope 3 emissions.”
Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, version 1.0, Box 1.1, pp. 22–23, WRI/WBCSD, 2013The Guidance goes on to note that supplier data “may actually be less accurate than industry-average data”, because of allocation complexity and reliability. The Guidance’s own Table IV ranks levels of data — product-level, then activity or process level, then facility, business unit and corporate — explicitly “in order of specificity”, which is not a synonym for quality [6].
None of that is an argument for staying on spend-based data. It is an argument for a platform that records which method produced each category figure and lets you defend the choice, rather than one that treats a supplier-data percentage as a score to maximise.
Deeper on the categories themselves: the Scope 3 emissions page works through all fifteen with UK examples, and Scope 3 under UK SRS covers the relief that lost its time limit.
Photo: Unsplash / Nick Fewings
Emission factors are versioned data, and most tools store the answer instead
The UK grid factor fell 26% in one edition, and most of that fall was a change in how it is calculated.
The UK government publishes conversion factors annually. The current edition is Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2026, published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on 11 June 2026 and last updated 31 July 2026 [18]. It ships as a full-set spreadsheet, a flat file for automatic processing, a 152-page methodology report and an 18-page major changes report.
Its own statement of scope is narrow and worth quoting, because it is the sentence that makes these factors the right ones for a UK reporter and the wrong ones for a global consolidation: they “enable users to calculate and report greenhouse gas emissions from their UK activities in 2026”, and are suitable for “UK-based organisations of all sizes” and “International organisations reporting on their UK operations” [18].
What changed in 2026
A 26% fall in the grid factor looks like a decarbonisation story. Most of it is not. The major changes report explains why, verbatim [20]:
“In previous updates, the data used in the calculations lagged the publication year by two years. In this year’s update, the lag has been reduced to one year using latest Energy Trends statistics. As a result, the reported change since the 2025 publication reflects two years’ worth of changes in the electricity grid mix and grid losses, rather than the usual one year.”
“Changes in the grid mix from 2023-2024 had a bigger impact (-16 percentage points) than the incorporation of an additional years’ worth of data (changes in the grid mix from 2024-2025 accounted for -3pp). The remaining 6-7pp of the decrease is due to methodological changes, improvements and corrections described above.”
Conversion factors 2026: major changes, DESNZ, entry 17The report also cites improved import and export accounting, and “correcting the previous methodology to resolve a small double-counting issue that affected autogenerators”. So of a 26-point fall, roughly six or seven points are definitional and a further three are simply a year of data arriving early.
The trap, in one table
Here is the trap, and it is the reason this chapter exists. The 2025 edition’s equivalent table is titled “excluding imported electricity” and totals 0.18882. The 2026 table is titled “including imported electricity” and totals 0.13096. They are not like-for-like. Compute the change naively and you get −31%; the government prints −26%, because it compared on a consistent basis.
A tool that stores a computed tCO₂e figure without also storing the factor table, its edition and its definitional basis cannot tell those two numbers apart. It will present a change in what the factor measures as a change in what your company emitted. Ask a vendor to show you the factor version stamped on a specific figure from two years ago. If the answer is a screenshot of a settings page rather than a field on the record, the tool stores the answer and not the working.
The cadence compounds this. Factors are updated annually — the 2025 edition was published 10 June 2025, the 2024 edition on 30 October 2024 and the 2023 edition on 28 June 2023 [21]. The publication month moves, so a process that assumes a June refresh will be wrong roughly one year in three.
Photo: Unsplash / @name_ gravityGlobal warming potential: AR6 is recommended, not required
And a UK company using the government’s own factors is on AR5. That is a divergence, not a defect — but it has to be handled explicitly.
A tonne of methane is not a tonne of CO₂e until you multiply it by a global warming potential, and which GWP you use depends on which IPCC assessment report you chose. The GHG Protocol’s requirement, from the February 2013 amendment, is narrower than most people assume — verbatim: companies “shall use 100-year GWP values from the IPCC” and “shall use GWPs from a single Assessment Report for any one inventory, where possible” [3].
The requirement does not name an assessment report. The recommendation does: GHG Protocol’s Global Warming Potential Values, version 2.0 of 7 August 2024, tabulates AR4, AR5 and AR6 and says “the use of the latest values (AR6) is recommended”, acknowledging that AR4 and AR5 values “are sometimes used for inventory and reporting purposes” [8].
The UK government has not followed the recommendation. The 2026 conversion factors methodology report states its basis verbatim: “Global Warming Potential (GWP) factors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fifth assessment report (IPCC, 2014) (GWP for CH4 = 28, GWP for N2O = 265)” [19]. Some refrigerants not covered by AR5 take values from AR6 or from earlier reports.
Two precision points, because this is where imprecise pages go wrong. First, 28 and 265 are the AR5 100-year values excluding climate–carbon feedbacks; AR5 also publishes higher values including feedbacks, where methane is 34. Saying “AR5” without the qualifier is not precise enough to reproduce a calculation.
Second, GHG Protocol’s technical assistance is explicit that companies “should use the same GWP values for the current inventory period and the base year to maintain consistency and comparability across time and scopes”. That is a restatement trigger in waiting: the day you move from AR5 to AR6, your base year has to move with you, or your trend line stops meaning anything.
Base year, restatement, and the 5% rule that does not exist
There is no GHG Protocol significance threshold. You choose one, you disclose it, and your software has to apply it consistently for years.
Restatement is the least glamorous thing a GHG platform does and the thing that decides whether its output is worth anything after year three. The rule comes from Chapter 5 of the Corporate Standard, and GHG Protocol’s own 2019 Scope 1 & 2 GHG Inventory Guidance handbook states it plainly [7]:
A company “may be required to recalculate its baseline year inventory whenever the following happens: Significant changes in the structure of the reporting company; Significant changes in the calculation methodology; [and] Discovery of significant errors or smaller errors that are collectively significant.”
“The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard does not have a set definition for ‘significant’, however a company should determine its own significance threshold (i.e. 2 percent) to define when changes, in aggregate, should trigger recalculation of the baseline year inventory.”
Scope 1 & 2 GHG Inventory Guidance, GHG Protocol, November 2019Read that second paragraph carefully, because a great deal of marketing depends on nobody doing so. There is no GHG Protocol significance threshold. The 2% in that sentence is GHG Protocol’s own worked example, introduced with “i.e.”. The widely-quoted “5% rule” does not appear in any GHG Protocol document this page could locate. What the standard actually requires is that the company sets its own threshold and discloses it — Chapter 9 lists the base-year recalculation policy among the required reporting elements [2].
The distinction that decides every case: structural or organic
An emission factor revision sits awkwardly across that line, and it is worth being explicit rather than glib. A revision that changes what the factor measures — the 2026 grid factor’s move to an including-imports basis, say — is a change in calculation methodology. A revision that reflects a genuinely different grid is not. Chapter 9 requires you to give “appropriate context” for any significant change that triggers a recalculation either way, which is a documentation requirement your platform either supports or leaves to a Word file nobody can find in 2029.
The checker below works a change through that logic, using the triggers the 2019 Guidance names and the threshold you set yourself.
Does this change trigger a base-year recalculation?
Pick what changed and how big it was against your own threshold. The checker applies the 2019 Guidance triggers and tells you what Chapter 9 then requires you to disclose.
The threshold is yours, not the tool’s. The checker asks for it rather than assuming one, because assuming one is the error this chapter exists to correct.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The verdict is an account of what two published documents require, not advice about your inventory.
Photo: Unsplash / Nicholas Doherty
Where a UK greenhouse gas number legally lands
Five regimes, one dataset, and only two of them are in force. Knowing which is which is most of the procurement decision.
Vendors sell against a blur of acronyms. The blur hides the only distinction that matters for a buyer: which of these obliges you to do anything today.
Two of the five oblige you today, and they oblige different things of different companies. SECR is a GHG reporting regime. ESOS is not — it is an energy audit regime, and there is no greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirement in it at all. The only link the Environment Agency’s guidance draws runs the other way: “Systems in place to collect and audit energy consumption to meet ESOS obligations … can help organisations to meet their SECR requirements” [38] [39].
ESOS also moved recently, which is worth knowing before accepting a vendor’s account of it. The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/701, came into force on 22 July 2026 [40]. They remove Display Energy Certificates and Green Deal Assessments as alternative compliance routes, extend ISO 50001 deemed compliance, and insert a new regulation 33A exempting undertakings with zero kWh of total energy consumption. None of that changes the point above: ESOS still asks for energy audits, not a greenhouse gas disclosure.
“Large” means different things in different regimes
This is where a procurement conversation usually goes wrong, because the two live UK regimes use different tests with different logic and different numbers.
And there is now a band that is medium-sized for accounts and large for SECR
On 6 April 2025 the Companies (Accounts and Reports) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2024 raised the Companies Act medium-sized thresholds: turnover from £36m to £54m and balance sheet total from £18m to £27m, with employees unchanged at 250 [28].
It did not move SECR. Schedule 7 paragraph 20B has always carried its own table of figures rather than cross-referring to section 465 of the Companies Act, so the uplift moved section 465 and left 20B standing at £36m / £18m / 250 [25]. The Explanatory Memorandum says so in terms: these regulations “do not affect the streamlined energy and carbon reporting (‘SECR’) requirements”, with the consequence that “qualifying as an unquoted company or LLP required to comply with SECR requirements will no longer be aligned with qualifying as an unquoted large company or LLP under the Companies Act 2006” [29].
For financial years beginning on or after 6 April 2025 there is a band of companies — roughly £36m to £54m of turnover — that have become medium-sized for accounts purposes while remaining in scope for SECR. If your finance team has told you the company “dropped below the threshold”, check which threshold they meant. Two different instruments, two different tables, one of which did not move.
For UK groups with EU operations, the CSRD position narrowed sharply in 2026: the amended scope test is net turnover over €450m and more than 1,000 employees, and a third-country parent is caught only where it generates €450m of net turnover in the EU and has an EU subsidiary or branch above €200m [53] [54]. That is a materially smaller population than before Omnibus I. This page does not publish a figure for how many UK groups that is, because no post-Omnibus population figure is traceable to a single Commission document.
What SECR actually makes you disclose
Seven paragraphs of a 2008 statutory instrument, and a guidance document that has not been updated since March 2019.
A point of order that trips up software procurement: the SECR obligations do not live in the 2018 regulations. SI 2018/1155 is an amending instrument. The operative requirements sit in Schedule 7 to SI 2008/410 — Part 7 for quoted companies, Part 7A for large unquoted companies and LLPs [22] [24]. If a vendor cites the 2018 SI for a substantive requirement, they are citing the wrong document.
Paragraph 20D(5) permits exclusion of emissions and energy consumed outside the UK, and 20D(6) is a practicability carve-out that requires you to state what has been omitted and why. Neither is a licence to leave things out quietly.
The 40,000 kWh exemption is an exemption from disclosure, not from the regime
Where a company consumed 40,000 kWh of energy or less in the United Kingdom during the period, the report need not contain the information — but the report must state that it is not disclosing, and why [26]. The company remains in scope. A platform whose SECR module simply produces nothing for a low-energy user has produced a non-compliant report, because the statement is itself a required disclosure.
What SECR does not require
SECR is not a Scope 3 regime, and the government guidance says so directly: “You are not required to report on other emissions associated with inputs into your company (such as emissions from your supply chain)” [30].
There is exactly one Scope 3 sliver inside the mandatory calculation for large unquoted companies, and it is a good test of whether a tool actually models SECR rather than approximating it. In: “Fuel used in personal/hire cars on business use (including fuel for which the organisation reimburses its employees following claims for business mileage)”. Out: “Fuel associated with taxi journeys your employees take where you do not operate the taxi firm”. Both sentences are from the same page of the same guidance.
If SECR is the whole of your obligation, the SECR requirements page is the fuller treatment, and the SECR reporting guide walks the disclosure itself.
UK SRS S2 on greenhouse gases, quoted rather than summarised
Paragraph 29(a) is the most software-relevant paragraph in UK sustainability reporting, and almost nobody quotes it.
UK SRS S1 and UK SRS S2 were published on 25 February 2026. GOV.UK states the position in one sentence: “The standards are available for voluntary use, by any entity that chooses to do so” [34]. Neither standard contains an effective date, deliberately, and as at 19 August 2026 no legislation or regulation requires any UK entity to apply them.
Paragraph 29(a) of UK SRS S2 sets out what an entity applying the standard must do about greenhouse gases. Six sub-paragraphs; five consequences for software.
The two reliefs, and the asymmetry nobody states correctly
UK SRS S2 carries two transitional reliefs that bear on greenhouse gases, and the government response to the consultation is the authority on both [35].
The consequence is a fact that almost nothing on this subject states: the Scope 3 relief in UK SRS S2 has no time limit and no instrument to give it one, because the legislation that would specify its availability does not exist. An entity applying UK SRS voluntarily today may omit Scope 3 entirely and still assert compliance with UK SRS S2.
That claim depends on paragraph 73A of UK SRS S1, which is asymmetric and is almost always quoted in its symmetric form:
“An entity making use of the provision in paragraph E3 of UK SRS S1 is not permitted to assert compliance with UK SRS S1 and shall disclose use of this provision instead. However, an entity making use of one or more of these three provisions is not prevented from asserting compliance with UK SRS S2, but it shall disclose its use of those provisions alongside its statement of compliance.”
UK SRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information, paragraph 73A, DBT, 25 February 2026 [33]Stated standard by standard, because that is the only correct way to state it: using C3 or C4 costs you nothing. Using the climate-only relief at S1 paragraph E3 costs you the S1 compliance statement, while leaving the S2 statement available. Any page that compresses this into “taking a relief costs you your compliance statement” has lost the distinction that matters.
Financed emissions — PCAF is convention, not requirement
For asset managers, commercial banks and insurers, paragraph 29(a)(vi)(2) and paragraphs B58–B63A require additional information about financed emissions. What those paragraphs require is disclosure about methodology — for asset management, at B61, “the methodology used to calculate the financed emissions, including the method of allocation the entity used to attribute its share of emissions in relation to the size of investments”, with commercial banking and insurance mirroring it against gross exposure [32].
It does not prescribe an attribution formula and it names no provider. A full-document search of the published UK SRS S2 for “PCAF” and “Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials” returns nothing. The PCAF standard exists and most firms use it — The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard Part A: Financed Emissions, third edition, December 2025 [52] — but “UK SRS S2 requires PCAF” turns an implementation choice into a false normative claim.
One further detail worth knowing before treating “PCAF-aligned” as transitive to GHG Protocol conformance: PCAF’s own imprint records that only the 2020 first edition was reviewed by GHG Protocol, and that because “the GHG Protocol has since closed its Built on GHG Protocol review service”, the second-edition additions and “all new methodologies and guidance introduced in the December 2025 edition, have not yet been reviewed by the GHG Protocol”.
Photo: Unsplash / Noah BuscherThe assurance standard changes on 15 December 2026
The only standard written specifically for a greenhouse gas statement is withdrawn that day, and the UK register that would replace part of it has not opened.
ISAE 3410, Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements, has been the IAASB’s dedicated GHG assurance standard since reports covering periods ending on or after 30 September 2013. The IAASB’s own page now states it plainly: “ISAE 3410 has been withdrawn with effect from December 15, 2026, the effective date of ISSA 5000” [43].
What replaces it is general rather than specific. ISSA 5000, General Requirements for Sustainability Assurance Engagements, applies “to all assurance engagements on sustainability information … regardless of how that information is presented”, and is effective for periods beginning on or after 15 December 2026 [44]. The FRC issued ISSA (UK) 5000 in November 2025 with the same effective date [45].
ISO 14064 is additional, not alternative
Two ISO standards come up in vendor material, and the relationship between them and the GHG Protocol is routinely misdescribed. ISO 14064-1:2018 is the preparer’s specification for quantification and reporting at organisation level; ISO 14064-3:2019 is the specification for verification and validation [41] [42]. They are not alternatives to each other, and neither is an alternative to the GHG Protocol. ISO says so itself: “The ISO 14064 series is GHG programme neutral. If a GHG programme is applicable, requirements of that GHG programme are additional to the requirements of the ISO 14064 series.”
What assurance actually demands of software
Strip away the standard-setting and the requirement is unchanged from the Corporate Standard’s transparency principle: a clear audit trail. In practice an assurer will ask to walk a number backwards — from the disclosed figure, to the calculation, to the factor and its version, to the activity data, to the source document, and to whoever entered or changed it and when. A platform that can produce that chain on demand makes assurance a sampling exercise. One that cannot makes it a reconstruction project, and reconstruction is billed by the hour.
The standard is being rewritten, and the timeline has slipped twice
Everything in this chapter is draft. That is the most important thing about it, and it is the part vendor blogs keep dropping.
GHG Protocol is consolidating four workstreams — the Corporate Standard, the Scope 2 Guidance, the Scope 3 Standard and a new Actions and Market Instruments workstream — into a single document, harmonised with ISO 14064-1. The deliverable is named in the Standard Development Plan of 29 July 2026: “GHG Protocol Corporate Standard: Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Version 3.0)”, in two parts [9].
As at 19 August 2026 no revised standard has been published, and no consolidated draft has been published for consultation. The 2004 Corporate Standard as amended, the 2015 Scope 2 Guidance and the 2011 Scope 3 Standard remain the standards in force.
The dates, and how they have moved
Two consultations have already run. The Scope 2 Guidance and Electricity Sector Consequential Accounting consultation opened on 20 October 2025 and, after an extension “in response to stakeholder feedback”, closed on 31 January 2026 [16]. The Actions and Market Instruments Phase 1 white paper ran a 60-day request for information from 31 March to 31 May 2026 [14]. GHG Protocol’s summary of the Scope 2 outcome runs to a single sentence — that it “highlighted a range of stakeholder perspectives” — so whether hourly matching survived consultation in its proposed form is, on the published record, unresolved.
What is proposed — every item below is draft
Nobody is ready for a standard that does not exist, and a vendor claiming otherwise is selling a draft as a rule. The useful question is narrower and answerable today: could this platform re-run a closed year on a different set of rules? Hourly matching, if it lands, is a data-architecture change — half-hourly consumption joined to certificate issue and retirement timestamps, by grid region. A tool that already stores consumption at interval resolution and certificates as retired instruments with identifiers has a migration. A tool that stores monthly kWh and a renewable percentage has a rebuild.
Nine questions for the demo, and the answer that passes
Each one traces to a paragraph of a published document. None of them can be answered with a dashboard.
Vendor demos are optimised. They show you the chart at the end, on data that was prepared for the purpose. These nine questions are designed to be asked in the demo, on the vendor’s own sample data, and to have answers you can see on a screen rather than answers you have to take on trust.
A tenth question is worth asking of the people rather than the product: who signs the methodology statement? SECR paragraph 20F requires the directors’ report to state the methodologies used. That is a statement by directors, informed by a tool. No platform can make it for them, and any vendor implying otherwise is selling something it cannot deliver.
The platforms, and what this page does not claim about them
Seventeen platforms reviewed on the sibling page. Listed here for orientation, grouped by what they are, not ranked.
This page is about mechanics, so it does not rank vendors and it does not assert that any named platform passes the nine questions above — that is what the demo is for, and the answers change with releases. What follows is the roster from the carbon reporting software comparison, where each platform has a fuller write-up, grouped by the kind of product it is.
This page makes no certification, endorsement, award or client claim about any platform listed, and none of the groupings above is a ranking. Where the sibling page marks a capability as native or configured, that is its editorial reading of published vendor material at the time it was written, not a test result. Ask the nine questions yourself. A vendor that cannot show you factor versioning on a stored figure has told you something no comparison table can.
A greenhouse gas figure is a claim about a boundary, a factor version and a method, expressed as a number. Software that stores only the number cannot restate a base year, cannot tell a definitional change from a decarbonisation trend, and cannot walk an assurer backwards from the disclosure to the source document. Everything else is presentation.
The bottom line · Photo: Unsplash / Zac Wolff
You now know what the standards require of a platform. The question that decides your shortlist is the one this page cannot answer: which regime actually reaches you, and when.
See which UK regime reaches you Or compare the seventeen platforms in full
Photo: Unsplash / Quokkabottles
GHG reporting software in reference form
The same material restated for lookup rather than reading — key facts, what is settled and what is not, then the FAQs, the glossary and every source.
GHG reporting software — the short version
Every figure below appears earlier on this page with its source. Nothing is introduced here for the first time.
What is decided, and what is genuinely open
The distinction most pages on this subject collapse. Everything in the right-hand column is dated and checkable.
Two of those open items are worth restating as dated negatives rather than as uncertainty, because the difference matters when a vendor quotes a deadline at you.
GHG reporting software FAQs
The questions people actually search on this subject, answered from the primary documents rather than from each other.
GHG reporting software is a platform that collects activity data, applies emission factors to it, and produces a greenhouse gas disclosure that conforms to a named standard. The standard that matters in the UK is the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (2004), which UK SRS S2 names by title and year at paragraph 29(a)(ii). The useful test of such a platform is not whether it calculates emissions — anything can — but whether it stores the factor version, the organisational boundary and the base-year recalculation policy alongside the figure, because Chapter 9 of that standard requires all three to be reported.
In practice, nothing — the terms are used interchangeably by vendors, and the same products appear under both labels. GHG accounting software and carbon accounting software both usually mean a tool implementing the GHG Protocol. If there is a distinction worth drawing, it is that “carbon” sometimes implies CO₂ alone while a GHG inventory covers seven gases, and that “reporting” emphasises the disclosure output while “accounting” emphasises the measurement. Do not choose a product on the label.
Partly. SECR is mandatory and in force — quoted companies, and large unquoted companies and LLPs meeting the 2-of-3 test, must disclose Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, energy use in kWh, at least one intensity ratio, a methodology statement and comparatives, in the directors’ report. UK SRS is not mandatory: S1 and S2 were published on 25 February 2026 for voluntary use, they contain no effective date, and as at 19 August 2026 no legislation requires any entity to apply them. ESOS is mandatory but is not a GHG reporting regime — it requires energy audits, not emissions disclosure.
For large unquoted companies and LLPs it is a 2-of-3 test: turnover of more than £36 million, a balance sheet total of more than £18 million, and more than 250 employees. Schedule 7 paragraph 20B of SI 2008/410 frames it as an exemption, so a company is out of SECR if it meets two or more of the limits and in if it exceeds two or more. Quoted companies are in scope regardless of size. Note that the Companies Act medium-sized thresholds rose to £54 million and £27 million on 6 April 2025 — SECR’s figures did not move, because paragraph 20B carries its own table.
Not in the 2004 Corporate Standard, which describes Scope 3 as “an optional reporting category that allows for the treatment of all other indirect emissions”. Scope 3 accounting is required for conformance with the separate Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard of 2011, which says companies “shall account for all scope 3 emissions and disclose and justify any exclusions”. Making Scope 3 mandatory in the consolidated Corporate Standard is a draft proposal in a December 2025 progress update, not a rule. Three documents and a draft — not one requirement.
Because the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance of January 2015 requires it. Companies with operations in markets that provide product or supplier-specific data in the form of contractual instruments “shall report scope 2 emissions in two ways and label each result according to the method” — one location-based, using grid-average factors, and one market-based, using contractual instruments. The Guidance is equally explicit the other way: where no such instruments exist in the market, “only one scope 2 result shall be reported, based on the location-based method”.
Location-based. Paragraph 29(a)(v) requires an entity to “disclose its location-based Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, and provide information about any contractual instruments that is necessary to inform users’ understanding”. The market-based figure and the contractual-instrument narrative are supplementary information, not a substitute. A platform that reports only a market-based number does not satisfy 29(a)(v).
No official one. The Association of Issuing Bodies publishes a Great Britain residual mix — 280.64 gCO₂/kWh for the 2025 vintage, published 26 May 2026 — and it is the de facto convention because it is the only published GB figure. But the AIB states that “the official residual mixes for each country are in principle published by the respective national authorities”, and no UK authority adopts it. Ofgem operates fuel mix disclosure, which is a different instrument, and the DESNZ conversion factors contain no residual mix at all. Scope 2 quality criterion 8 provides for exactly this case: the residual mix must be made available, “or its absence shall be disclosed by the reporting entity”.
Upstream: 1 purchased goods and services; 2 capital goods; 3 fuel- and energy-related activities (not included in scope 1 or scope 2); 4 upstream transportation and distribution; 5 waste generated in operations; 6 business travel; 7 employee commuting; 8 upstream leased assets. Downstream: 9 downstream transportation and distribution; 10 processing of sold products; 11 use of sold products; 12 end-of-life treatment of sold products; 13 downstream leased assets; 14 franchises; 15 investments. Each has a minimum boundary defined in Table 5.4 of the 2011 standard, and category 3’s parenthetical is part of its official name — it is what stops it double-counting Scopes 1 and 2.
Not necessarily, and the GHG Protocol says so. The Scope 3 Technical Guidance states at Box 1.1 that although supplier-specific and hybrid methods are “more specific to the individual supplier”, “they may not produce results that are a more accurate reflection of the product’s contribution to the reporting company’s scope 3 emissions”, and that supplier data “may actually be less accurate than industry-average data” because of allocation complexity and reliability. The Guidance’s own ranking of data levels is explicitly a ranking of specificity, not of quality. Specificity is worth pursuing; it is not the same thing as accuracy.
There isn’t one. GHG Protocol’s own 2019 Scope 1 & 2 Inventory Guidance states that the Corporate Standard “does not have a set definition for ‘significant’, however a company should determine its own significance threshold (i.e. 2 percent)” — and that 2% is a worked example, introduced with “i.e.”, not a rule. The company sets its own threshold and discloses it. Chapter 9 of the Corporate Standard lists the base-year recalculation policy among the information a public GHG report must contain. Software that ships a hard-coded 5% threshold is implementing a rule that does not exist.
The 2019 Guidance names three triggers: “significant changes in the structure of the reporting company”; “significant changes in the calculation methodology”; and “discovery of significant errors or smaller errors that are collectively significant”. The distinction that decides most real cases is structural versus organic. Acquisitions, divestitures, outsourcing, insourcing, boundary changes and method changes are structural and trigger recalculation. Opening a facility you built, growing, shrinking or genuinely reducing emissions are organic — recalculating those away would destroy the comparison the base year exists to make.
The UK government’s own. The current edition is Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2026, published by DESNZ on 11 June 2026 and last updated 31 July 2026. Its stated scope is that it “enable[s] users to calculate and report greenhouse gas emissions from their UK activities in 2026”, suitable for UK-based organisations of all sizes and for international organisations reporting on their UK operations. It is updated annually, with a methodology report and a major changes report alongside — and the publication month moves, so do not build a process that assumes a June refresh.
UK electricity fell 26% between the 2025 and 2026 editions, and most of that is not decarbonisation. DESNZ’s major changes report explains that the data lag was reduced from two years to one, so the change “reflects two years’ worth of changes in the electricity grid mix and grid losses, rather than the usual one year”. Of the fall, grid mix changes from 2023–2024 accounted for 16 percentage points, the extra year of data for 3, and “the remaining 6-7pp of the decrease is due to methodological changes, improvements and corrections” — including improved import and export accounting and a double-counting fix affecting autogenerators. The 2025 table also excluded imported electricity where the 2026 table includes it, so the two are not like-for-like.
GHG Protocol requires 100-year GWP values from the IPCC and requires you to use values from a single assessment report for any one inventory. It does not name a report. Its Global Warming Potential Values document of 7 August 2024 recommends AR6 while acknowledging that AR4 and AR5 values are still used. The UK government’s 2026 conversion factors use AR5 — methane at 28 and nitrous oxide at 265, the 100-year values excluding climate–carbon feedbacks. So a UK reporter using DESNZ factors is on AR5 while the Protocol recommends AR6. That is permitted, not a defect, but it is a divergence your software has to handle explicitly, because base year and current year must use the same values.
Essentially no. The government’s Environmental Reporting Guidelines state: “You are not required to report on other emissions associated with inputs into your company (such as emissions from your supply chain)”. There is exactly one Scope 3 element inside the mandatory calculation for large unquoted companies — fuel used in personal or hire cars on business use, including fuel reimbursed on business mileage claims. Taxi journeys where you do not operate the firm are outside it. Anything wider is voluntary.
For large unquoted companies, Schedule 7 Part 7A requires: emissions in tonnes CO₂e from gas combustion and transport fuel (20D(1)); emissions from purchased electricity (20D(2)); aggregate energy consumed in kWh (20D(3)); a description of the principal energy efficiency measures taken, if any (20D(4)); the methodologies used (20F); at least one intensity ratio (20G); and the prior year’s figures as comparatives, except in the first year (20H). Quoted companies have parallel requirements at paragraphs 15–18A on a global basis, stating the UK and offshore proportion separately.
Where a company consumed 40,000 kWh of energy or less in the United Kingdom during the reporting period, the report need not contain the energy and emissions information. But it is an exemption from disclosure, not from the regime: the report must state that the company is not disclosing, and why. A platform whose SECR output simply produces nothing for a low-energy user has produced a non-compliant report, because that statement is itself required.
As the standards stand, yes. UK SRS S2 paragraph C4 permits an entity not to disclose Scope 3 information, and the UK removed the “first annual reporting period” limit that IFRS S2 places on that relief — the government response records that its availability “will, instead, be specified in legislation or regulation”, and no such legislation exists as at 19 August 2026. UK SRS S1 paragraph 73A confirms that an entity using C3 or C4 “is not prevented from asserting compliance with UK SRS S2”, provided it discloses the use. The asymmetry is that the climate-only relief at S1 paragraph E3 does cost the entity its S1 compliance statement.
No. A full-document search of the published UK SRS S2 for “PCAF” and “Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials” returns nothing. What paragraphs B58–B63A require is disclosure about methodology — for asset management, “the methodology used to calculate the financed emissions, including the method of allocation the entity used to attribute its share of emissions in relation to the size of investments”, with commercial banking and insurance mirroring that against gross exposure. PCAF is the market convention and most firms use it, but it is an implementation choice, not a requirement of the standard.
No. ESOS is an energy audit regime. It requires an organisation to measure total energy consumption, identify areas of significant consumption covering at least 95% of the total, calculate energy intensity ratios, carry out audits or use a deemed-compliance route such as ISO 50001, produce a report with director-level sign-off, notify compliance and file an action plan. There is no greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirement in it. The Environment Agency’s guidance draws the link only in the other direction — ESOS energy data can help meet SECR requirements. The Phase 4 compliance notification deadline is 5 December 2027, with a qualification date of 31 December 2026.
Until 15 December 2026, ISAE 3410, the IAASB’s standard written specifically for assurance engagements on greenhouse gas statements. From that date it is withdrawn — the IAASB states that “ISAE 3410 has been withdrawn with effect from December 15, 2026, the effective date of ISSA 5000”. ISSA 5000 and the FRC’s ISSA (UK) 5000 take effect for periods beginning on or after that date and apply to all assurance engagements on sustainability information. ISO 14064-3:2019 remains available for verification and validation of GHG statements; note that ISO describes the 14064 series as GHG programme neutral, with a programme’s requirements being “additional to” ISO’s rather than replaced by them.
Yes, and nothing has been published yet. GHG Protocol is consolidating the Corporate Standard, the Scope 2 Guidance, the Scope 3 Standard and a new Actions and Market Instruments workstream into a single “GHG Protocol Corporate Standard … (Version 3.0)”, harmonised with ISO 14064-1. Its 29 July 2026 update gives “a consolidated public consultation in Q2 2027 and publication of the consolidated joint corporate standard in Q4 2028” — estimates that have moved twice in nine months, from “mid-2026 / end-2027” in December 2025. As at 19 August 2026 no consolidated draft has been published for consultation and the existing standards remain in force.
Hourly matching is a draft proposal for the revised Scope 2 standard: organisations using certificates would have to match them to consumption hourly, and source them from deliverable grid regions, replacing the 2015 approach of same-year certificates from broad market boundaries. It would apply only to certificate-backed market-based claims. It is not required today, no effective date has been set, and GHG Protocol says implementation “is expected to phase in over multiple years” after publication. The sensible procurement question is not whether a platform supports hourly matching but whether it stores consumption at interval resolution and certificates as retired instruments with identifiers — because that is the difference between a migration and a rebuild.
The GHG reporting software vocabulary, defined
Eighteen terms that appear on this page and are routinely used loosely elsewhere.
GHG reporting software — every source, linked
Primary documents only. Where a quotation reached this page through a secondary reproduction rather than the original PDF, the citation on the relevant section says so.
- The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised Edition) — WRI and WBCSD, March 2004
- Chapter 9 — Reporting GHG Emissions — the required and optional reporting elements of the above, WRI chapter text
- Required Greenhouse Gases in Inventories: Accounting and Reporting Standard Amendment — GHG Protocol, February 2013. Adds NF₃; sets the 100-year single-assessment-report GWP rule
- GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance — WRI and WBCSD, January 2015. An amendment to the Corporate Standard; dual reporting and the eight quality criteria
- Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard — WRI and WBCSD, September 2011. The 15 categories and Table 5.4 minimum boundaries
- Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, version 1.0 — WRI and WBCSD, 2013. Box 1.1 on specificity and accuracy
- Scope 1 & 2 GHG Inventory Guidance — GHG Protocol, November 2019. The recalculation triggers, and the absence of a set definition of “significant”
- Global Warming Potential Values, version 2.0 — GHG Protocol, 7 August 2024. AR4, AR5 and AR6 tabulated; AR6 recommended
- Consolidated Corporate Standard — Standard Development Plan — GHG Protocol, 29 July 2026
- GHG Protocol announces key standard development updates — GHG Protocol, 29 July 2026
- Standard development updates — FAQ resource — GHG Protocol, 29 July 2026. Consultation “estimated Q2 2027”; publication “estimated Q4 2028”
- Corporate Standard Phase 1 Progress Update — GHG Protocol, December 2025. Draft: equity share removed, Scope 3 mandatory, 1% exclusion caps
- Scope 3 Phase 1 Progress Update — GHG Protocol, 31 March 2026. Draft: 95% inclusion rule, new Category 16
- Actions and Market Instruments Phase 1 White Paper and RFI — GHG Protocol, March 2026. Draft: the multi-statement structure
- Upcoming Scope 2 public consultation: hourly matching and deliverability — GHG Protocol, 14 October 2025
- GHG Protocol opens public consultations on Scope 2 and Electricity Sector Consequential Accounting — 20 October 2025; extended to 31 January 2026
- Instructions for Proposing Revisions to the Scope 2 Standard — GHG Protocol, 16 December 2024. Reproduces the eight quality criteria
- Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2026 — DESNZ, published 11 June 2026, last updated 31 July 2026
- 2026 GHG conversion factors: methodology report — DESNZ, 152 pages. Table 9 and the AR5 basis
- Conversion factors 2026: major changes — DESNZ, 18 pages. Entry 17 explains the −26% electricity change
- Government conversion factors for company reporting — DESNZ collection page; every edition and its publication date
- The Companies (Directors’ Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018 — SI 2018/1155. The amending instrument that inserted SECR
- SI 2008/410, Schedule 7 Part 7 — SECR requirements for quoted companies
- SI 2008/410, Schedule 7 Part 7A — SECR requirements for unquoted companies and LLPs
- SI 2008/410, Schedule 7 paragraph 20B — the SECR qualifying conditions: £36m, £18m, 250
- SI 2008/410, Schedule 7 paragraph 20D — what must be disclosed, and the 40,000 kWh exemption
- SI 2008/410, Schedule 7 paragraphs 20F, 20G and 20H — methodology, intensity ratio and comparatives
- The Companies (Accounts and Reports) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2024, regulation 10 — SI 2024/1303, in force 6 April 2025. Medium-sized thresholds to £54m / £27m
- Explanatory Memorandum to SI 2024/1303 — DBT. Paragraph 6.7 confirms SECR is unaffected
- Environmental reporting guidelines: including Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting requirements — Defra / HM Government. Last updated 29 March 2019
- UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) S1 and UK SRS S2 — DBT, 25 February 2026
- UK SRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures — DBT, 25 February 2026, 45 pages. Paragraph 29(a) and Appendix B
- UK SRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information — DBT, 25 February 2026, 45 pages. Paragraph 73A
- UK Sustainability Reporting Standards — GOV.UK guidance, last updated 25 February 2026. “Available for voluntary use”
- Government response to the consultation on UK Sustainability Reporting Standards — DBT, 25 February 2026. Annex A on the C3 and C4 reliefs
- CP26/5: Aligning listed issuers’ sustainability disclosures with international standards — FCA. Closed 20 March 2026; page last updated 5 June 2026
- Sustainability reporting requirements — FCA, last updated 5 June 2026
- How to comply with the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme phase 4 — Environment Agency, published 30 July 2026, last updated 3 August 2026
- Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) — GOV.UK guidance, last updated 16 February 2026
- The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026 — SI 2026/701, in force 22 July 2026
- ISO 14064-1:2018 — organisation-level GHG quantification and reporting
- ISO 14064-3:2019 — verification and validation of GHG statements
- Assurance on a Greenhouse Gas Statement (ISAE 3410) — IAASB. “Withdrawn with effect from December 15, 2026”
- ISSA 5000, General Requirements for Sustainability Assurance Engagements — IAASB. Effective for periods beginning on or after 15 December 2026
- ISSA (UK) 5000 — Financial Reporting Council, November 2025
- FRC takes steps to support quality and consistency in the assurance of sustainability reporting — FRC, 12 November 2025
- Assurance of sustainability reporting — DBT consultation, 25 June to 17 September 2025, and the government response of 30 January 2026
- FRC sets out year of delivery in Plan and Budget for 2026/27 — FRC, 27 March 2026
- European Residual Mixes 2025, version 1.0 — Association of Issuing Bodies, 26 May 2026. The Great Britain figure and its untracked share
- Fuel Mix Disclosure (FMD) — Ofgem
- Fuel mix disclosure data table 2025 — DESNZ. The residual fuel mix, as percentages only
- The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard Part A: Financed Emissions, third edition — PCAF, December 2025
- Directive (EU) 2026/470 — EUR-Lex. Adopted 24 February 2026, in force 18 March 2026. The Omnibus I scope narrowing
- Council signs off simplification of sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements — Council of the EU, 24 February 2026
- Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) — Ofgem. The UK energy attribute certificate
Where to go next
This page covers the mechanics a platform must implement. These cover the regimes, the standards and the products themselves.