In recent years, corporate leaders have faced increasing pressure to produce credible, comparable, and verifiable carbon data. Yet even as sustainability reporting frameworks mature, one issue has remained persistent and highly problematic: the double-counting of emissions across supply chains. Today, a single ton of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be reported by multiple companies, in multiple tiers, for multiple purposes. The result is confusion for investors, weak comparability for regulators, and limited guidance for companies trying to decarbonize.
To address this issue, a group of prominent companies in the industrial, financial, and energy sectors, including BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, ExxonMobil, Banco Santander, BASF, Linde, and others, have launched Carbon Measures, a new initiative proposing an alternative framework for how the world tracks and attributes carbon emissions. Led by Amy Brachio, former Global Vice Chair for Sustainability at EY, Carbon Measures aims to reengineer emissions accounting at its foundation by shifting from company-level reporting to product-level carbon ledgers.
For executives navigating the crosscurrents of regulatory pressure, investor expectations, and supply chain complexity, the initiative could signal a major shift in how emissions data is created, attributed, and ultimately used.
Why Double-Counting Undermines Global Climate Efforts
The global system that most companies use today, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, was never designed for granular, product-level measurement across global supply chains. Instead, it relies heavily on aggregated company estimates and broad supply chain categories. While widely adopted, the system has a structural flaw that allows the same emissions to be counted multiple times.
For example, emissions from producing a ton of steel may be reported by the steel supplier (Scope 1), the manufacturer who purchased it (Scope 3), and the final product producer (another Scope 3). Each has different reasons for reporting the same emissions, but the end result is a system that dilutes clear lines of responsibility rather than clarifying it.
- Executives have long asked for more precise, auditable carbon data
- Investors want greater comparability
- Regulators want tighter assurance
- Boards want decision-useful metrics
Carbon Measures emerges directly from this landscape—arguing that the world needs a more rigorous, traceable, and financially aligned system for tracking carbon.
Introducing Carbon Measures: A New Approach to Emissions Accountability
At the heart of Carbon Measures’ proposal is a fundamental shift: emissions become a liability attached to products, not companies. Instead of every company separately reporting estimated emissions for their operations and supply chain, emissions are tracked once, at the point where they occur, and then carried downstream as a property of the physical product. The system resembles financial accounting in its philosophy:
- Carbon is generated at a source
- Carbon is measured and recorded in a ledger
- Carbon liability travels with the product as it moves through the supply chain
- At the end of the value chain, a product’s total carbon footprint is the cumulative result of every embedded emission generated along its production journey
This approach seeks to eliminate double-counting altogether: one ton of CO₂ is recorded a single time and then traced through the supply chain without duplication. Executives familiar with product carbon footprints, digital product passports, or lifecycle assessments will recognize the direction. However, Carbon Measures aims to embed these principles into a unified global standard rather than relying on a patchwork of voluntary, siloed methodologies.
Why Leading Companies Are Backing This Framework
The backing of BlackRock, ExxonMobil, and Santander has drawn attention not only because of their global influence but because it represents alignment across traditionally divergent sectors. Energy producers, manufacturers, logistics providers, and financial institutions often approach carbon accounting with varied priorities which means that their willingness to support a common framework creates the political and economic conditions for broader adoption.
The coalition currently includes nearly 20 companies across heavy industry, chemicals, infrastructure, and energy. Carbon Measures expects to expand membership significantly, aiming for more than 100 companies within several years. This scale is designed to create critical mass: a large enough segment of the global economy that the standard becomes practically unavoidable.
How Carbon Measures Could Transform Corporate Climate Action
Carbon Measures could mark a turning point in how companies understand and act on their real climate impact. By replacing high-level estimates with verifiable, product-level emissions data, the framework has the potential to reshape everything from supplier selection to investment decisions. If successful, it would give executives a clearer, more credible picture of where carbon truly sits in their supply chains and accelerate the shift toward low-carbon materials and technologies. For companies navigating tightening climate expectations, this level of precision could quickly become a strategic advantage rather than a nice-to-have.
- Better visibility: Product-level data would give procurement leaders clearer insight into which suppliers truly deliver low-carbon materials or energy, and which only appear low-carbon due to accounting inconsistencies.
- More credible data: A ledger-based approach could support more rigorous audits, reduce reliance on broad estimates, and enable standardized carbon disclosures across jurisdictions.
- New competitive dynamics: If carbon becomes a traceable attribute of products, similar to cost or quality, companies could differentiate not just on price but on embedded carbon intensity. This may reshape markets for steel, chemicals, fuels, and construction materials.
- Catalyst for low-carbon investment: Investors have long cited poor data as a barrier to financing low-carbon technologies. Precise, verifiable product-level data could unlock capital by enabling performance-based financing tied to carbon intensity reductions.
What Could Slow Carbon Measures’ Path to Adoption
Despite the potential to significantly change carbon accounting, Carbon Measures faces structural, technical, and political barriers that cannot be ignored. The shift from today’s long-standard practices to a unified, product-level accounting system will require rethinking established standards, mobilizing new digital infrastructure, and confronting legitimate concerns about responsibility and regulatory authority. These challenges underscore the unresolved questions that will determine whether Carbon Measures functions as a supplemental framework or provides a fundamental rethinking of global carbon accounting.
- Integration with existing standards: The GHG Protocol is deeply embedded in regulation, corporate systems, and sustainability reporting. Replacing existing standards, or even coexistence, will be complex.
- Data collection at global scale: Tracing emissions across multi-tier supply chains requires new digital infrastructure and widespread supplier participation.
- Risk of shifting accountability: Critics argue that counting emissions only once could reduce incentives for downstream companies to take responsibility for supply-chain emissions.
- Regulatory alignment: Without government adoption, voluntary standards may struggle to achieve truly global reach.
Carbon Measures acknowledges these challenges and expects its framework to take several years to finalize and even longer to scale.
The Bottom Line
Carbon Measures is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to redesign how the world accounts for emissions. By proposing a product-level, ledger-based model, backed by major players in finance and industry, the initiative aims to bring precision, comparability, and credibility to carbon data. If adopted widely, this framework could reshape supply-chain decisions, investment strategies, regulatory compliance, and market dynamics. Whether Carbon Measures become the new global standard remains uncertain, but its introduction signals a pivotal shift in how emissions should be measured, attributed, and ultimately reduced.
If your company is looking for assistance in navigating the evolving carbon account landscape, or in taking inventory of your GHG emissions footprint, please contact Canopy Edge for an initial consultation to discuss objectives and options.
