How companies measure emissions: building a GHG inventory step by step
A step-by-step guide to a company greenhouse gas inventory: boundaries, activity data, emission factors from CEA and IPCC, a worked calculation, base year, data quality, verification under ISO 14064-3, and where an SME can start.
Step 8: What are verification and assurance?
Verification means an independent body checks your GHG statement against criteria. ISO 14064-3:2019 sets out how verification and validation of organisation, project and product GHG statements are done. Two common levels are:
- Limited assurance: the verifier finds nothing that suggests the statement is materially wrong. Less work, lower cost.
- Reasonable assurance: the verifier gives a positive opinion that the statement is fairly stated. More testing, higher cost.
For listed companies in India, SEBI's circular of 28 March 2025 requires assessment or assurance of BRSR Core, which includes Scope 1 and 2, for the top 150 companies by market capitalisation from FY 2023-24, rising to the top 1,000 by FY 2026-27. "Assessment" means a third-party assessment under standards developed by the Industry Standards Forum in consultation with SEBI. The circular also requires that the provider has no conflict of interest, such as also selling consulting services to the company.
Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (revised edition, 2004); GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (2011); GHG Protocol: key standard development updates FAQ (29 July 2026); ISO 14064-1:2018 Greenhouse gases, Part 1 (ISO catalogue); ISO 14064-3:2019 Greenhouse gases, Part 3 (ISO catalogue); India GHG Program (WRI India, CII, TERI); India GHG Program: Road Transport Emission Factors technical paper, version 1.0 (2015, draft); Central Electricity Authority: CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector; IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 2 Energy, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2; IPCC 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines; IPCC AR6 Working Group I (2021), Chapter 7, Table 7.15; UK Government: Greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors 2026 (DESNZ); SEBI: Format of BRSR Core, Annexure I (July 2023); SEBI circular SEBI/HO/CFD/CFD-PoD-1/P/CIR/2025/42 (28 March 2025); Central Electricity Authority, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, User Guide Version 22.0 (August 2026); MoEFCC, India First Biennial Transparency Report (BTR-1) to the UNFCCC
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked by the GreenEye team against the sources shown in each section.
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