Introducing the Carbon Call

We work to better discover, understand and share GHG emissions data.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting is experiencing unprecedented expansion. Driven by greater and more concerted ambition to address the climate crisis, companies in particular are accelerating and extending long-standing work to assess, reduce, and report GHG emissions.

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The global trend of increased GHG accounting and reporting places increased demand on companies to compile comparable and sharable GHG information—that is, there is an increased demand for interoperability, or the ability to compare, share, and use information across GHG accounting and reporting systems and the supporting digital data ecosystem.

The Carbon Call is mobilizing collective action, investment, and resources to strengthen GHG accounting, making it more reliable and interoperable for the planet. 

The Carbon Call builds on, promotes, and helps accelerate ongoing work to improve measurement, reporting and verification of GHG emissions and removal, primarily for the corporate sector. 

With increasing regulatory pressure–for example, the United States Securities Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed climate risk disclosure rule, the European Union’s (EU) new rules on corporate sustainability reporting–new requirements from financial institutions, and the drive to set emissions reduction targets within the value chain, there is increased urgency for more reliable and shareable corporate emissions data and, consequently, greater interoperability of GHG accounting systems

Collectively, we need GHG accounting that is increasingly reliable, interoperable, and up to the task of measuring progress and challenges. 

The Carbon Call’s Roadmap to more interoperable greenhouse gas emissions accounting, released at COP27, outlines findings and opportunities to drive more interoperable GHG accounting and reporting. The roadmap results from five months of collective problem-solving and is backed by case studies from the Carbon Call’s expert advisory group. It is a living document that will be updated in line with new developments and consensus.

We mobilize collective action, investment, and resources to accelerate solutions to better discover, share, and understand GHG emissions data. The Carbon Call has evaluated solution blueprints and elements of a connected set of solutions are emerging.

• Digital smart dictionary. A digital smart dictionary promotes consistency in preferred terms and allows for reported data to be transformed into digital reporting taxonomies and classifications that will enable the data to be processed and shared quickly.

• Discoverable data. Discoverable data can be more easily located, mapped, and integrated into software systems, analyses, and tools and have the potential to increase the interoperability of emissions estimates as well as the underlying data and emissions factors used to produce them.

• Metadata requirements. Metadata increases transparency, traceability, and auditability of GHG accounting and reporting by ensuring that reported emissions values are accompanied by the critical information (e.g., units of measure, data quality, timestamps, data sources) needed to understand how they were developed.

In 2023, the Carbon Call will work with its member organizations to mature these solutions and attain consensus. 

The Carbon Call seeks to complement current standards, protocols, and GHG registries by agreeing to consensus-based ways forward to address key constraints to interoperability and by providing guidelines based on best practices in technology, data management, and finance for companies to follow. The initiative’s efforts should be viewed as a supplement to existing transparency initiatives and GHG accounting methods and standards, including the GHG Protocol, relevant ISO standards, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Partnership for Carbon Transparency (including its frameworks and guidelines seeking to standardize emissions accounting and data exchange).