Final GHG Protocol Scope 3 And Product Life Cycle Standards Available

The most popular suite of tools to measure and manage greenhouse gases just got a lot more complete -- allowing companies to track the impact of their products from natural resources and raw materials, through manufacturing, use and disposal, and providing a detailed framework to measure companies' "everything else" Scope 3 emissions.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative (a collaboration between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) finalized its two newest global greenhouse gas standards on October 4. The GHG Protocol are the most widely used suite of accounting tools for measuring, managing and reporting greenhouse gas emissions -- for instance, in 2010, more than 85% of the nearly 2,500 respondents to the Carbon Disclosure Project survey used these standards. With the addition of the two new standards -- the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Product Life Cycle Accounting