The Greenhouse Gas (or GHG) Protocol is the grandfather of almost all the various greenhouse gas or carbon reporting standards, labels, carbon calculators and other measuring guidance you are likely to come across. So even if you are not familiar with it, it’s very likely that your business is affected by it.
Its story started way back in the 1990s. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) had both been involved in work that made them see the need for a common way of accounting for and reporting greenhouse gas emissions. They launched the GHG Protocol Initiative in 1998 as a partnership between business and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
The first edition of The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard was published in 2001, and has been developing ever since, both through revising the main Standard and adding new documents to support it. Other standards have been developed using it as their basis: the international Standard ISO 14064-1 Specification with Guidance at the Organization Level for Quantification and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals being just one.
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