NEW YORK & PARIS -- Carbon Measures and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) announced the formation of an independent expert panel that will work to develop the guidelines and implementation steps to establish a global carbon emissions accounting system based on financial accounting principles.

The Technical Expert Panel on Carbon Accounting will be comprised of experts from academia, financial accounting, industry and civil society, representing multiple perspectives and geographies. Together, they will define the principles, scope, and applications of a carbon emissions accounting system modeled on financial accounting principles. Such a system would provide accurate, transparent, verifiable, and timely company- and product-level data, ensuring every tonne of carbon emissions is counted only once and attributed correctly at each step of the value chain.

The panel will be co-chaired by Amy Brachio, CEO of Carbon Measures, and Karthik Ramanna, Professor of Business and Public Policy and Director of the Transformational Leadership Fellowship at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, and the Co-Founder and Principal Investigator at the E-ledgers Institute. S&P Global Commodity Insights, the leading independent provider of information, analytics, carbon market infrastructure software, and benchmark prices for global commodities and energy markets, and a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), will serve as the panel’s independent knowledge partner. In the coming weeks, ICC will launch a call for interest to be considered as expert panel members, advisory board members and knowledge partners.

“This panel will bring together experts from around the world—representing the financial accounting, chemical engineering, business, and academic communities—to develop the principles and implementation pathways to make a global carbon accounting framework a reality,” said Amy Brachio, CEO of Carbon Measures. “This is a necessary step that builds and improves on current systems to unleash market forces that enhances transparency and can be used by policymakers to underpin regulation that aligns incentives, unlocks capital, and ultimately reduces emissions. The panel will help design the system needed to provide timely and accurate data to ensure carbon is tracked and attributed correctly, because you can’t effectively manage what you can’t accurately measure.”

“ICC plays an integral role in supporting businesses around the world,” said Andrew Wilson, Deputy Secretary-General of ICC. “For nearly 100 years, we’ve convened industries to set standards that businesses can adopt across borders. With a network of 45 million businesses in 170 countries, we know the demand is there for a shift that enhances market precision around carbon tracking and allows businesses to differentiate their products.”

“About 90 years ago, a small group of experts from business and academia gathered in the wider public interest to create GAAP for financial accounts. Their innovation allowed capital markets to scale like never before,” said Karthik Ramanna, Professor of Business and Public Policy and Director of the Transformational Leadership Fellowship at the University of Oxford. “We are at a stage today where a similar set of rigorous, technologically agnostic, policy-neutral accounting principles are needed for supply-chain emissions. If done right, these principles can bring to bear the full power of capitalism to accelerate decarbonization while driving energy abundance.”

“S&P Global Commodity Insights is pleased to be the independent knowledge partner for this important initiative aimed at harmonization of product-level emissions quantification, reporting and accounting,” said Dave Ernsberger, Co-President of S&P Global Commodity Insights. “Our deep, long-standing and wide-ranging expertise in commodity markets that includes data, analytics, and also, specifically, sustainability and emissions-quantification, will be critical to the coalition as it works toward its objectives.”

The panel will:

· Inventory existing approaches for carbon emissions accounting, along with strengths, challenges and opportunities to generate alignment;
· Develop guiding principles for a carbon emissions accounting framework that builds on positive attributes of existing carbon emissions accounting approaches, addresses the challenges to current practices and enables global alignment; guiding principles will also consider learnings from chemistry, financial accounting practices and product-level standard-setting successes;
· Apply the principles to develop proposals to underpin adoption by standard-setters and policymakers;
· Develop detailed product-level implementation roadmaps to foster real-world adoption;
· Recommend ways to improve data quality, methods, and governance for global alignment and build consensus among stakeholders;
· Determine a roadmap for implementation, including proposed standard-setters for adoption and the conditions that need to be in place to support successful adoption at scale, such as implementing organizations, attestation standards, enforcement requirements, education and oversight; and
· Publish and endorse reports and peer reviewed publications.