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.
What tools can help?
- Spreadsheets: enough for most MSMEs with a few sites.
- GHG Protocol calculation tools: free, sector and cross-sector spreadsheets on ghgprotocol.org, plus the Scope 3 Evaluator for a first screening.
- India GHG Program tools: India-specific calculation tools listed on indiaghgp.org.
- Carbon accounting software: useful for many sites, many suppliers or monthly tracking. Check which factor sources and versions any tool uses before trusting its numbers.
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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