GHG Protocol Important Update September 2026:

Market instruments to be reported in their own statement. Under the current Corporate Standard, companies can’t use certificates to reduce their Scope 3 emissions at all (although SBTi allows sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) certificates to count against targets). Purchases of SAF certificates, low-carbon steel or other book-and-claim or mass-balance products don’t appear anywhere in the current standard. 

A market-based statement would give these scope 3 instruments a place to be reported. But it could also encourage companies to spend on certificates when that money would do more good invested in real reductions across their own operations and value chain. Respondents made clear that any market-based reporting would depend on strict evidence: eligibility criteria, registry controls, unique identifiers, retirement records and residual emission factors. 

Already buying low carbon certificates? If you’re buying these instruments now, keeping full contractual and registry documentation would put you in a stronger position.

How much benefit will this be to global heating? Having somewhere to report an instrument doesn’t prove it has a real-world benefit, and biofuels show the risks most clearly. Biofuel carbon accounting assumes that the CO2 released when the fuel is burned was absorbed by plants as they grew, so the CO2 released doesn’t get included in the main inventory (instead it’s reported as outside of scope – but rarely do companies do this). It relies on the crops grown to be ‘additional’ – meaning they wouldn’t have been grown unless needed for biofuel. 

The problems with SAF and biofuels. That assumption doesn’t hold up well against how supply actually works. There isn’t enough SAF to meet demand, and waste-derived fuels are especially scarce. That pushes production onto crops grown on land that would otherwise produce food. There are also reports of virgin forest being cleared, for example in Canada, to make wood pellets for biomass power stations that are then described as timber industry residues. In some regions, indigenous communities have been pushed off their land so it can be used for biofuel crops, food production or projects that generate carbon credits. So adding the need to grow biofuel crops to the queue of land uses will lead to more land clearance, and help force up emissions.

Checks and balances with certificates.Respondents asked that market-based instruments shouldn’t be presented as evidence of real-world reductions unless that impact is shown separately, and that the GHG impact statement should capture negative effects such as leakage and displacement. For companies buying biofuel certificates, that could mean checking where the feedstock comes from, what land it’s grown on and who’s affected, as well as the certificate paperwork.

Impact claims would face tighter scrutiny. The majority of respondents agreed that negative impacts, such as rebound or leakage, should be reported alongside positive ones. Many asked for transparent baselines, uncertainty disclosure and conservative assumptions. 

Netting certificates off emissions not allowed. Across every section, respondents rejected any approach that lets a company subtract contractual or impact figures from its physical emissions.

How the statements are used would be decided elsewhere. The GHG Protocol intends to stay policy neutral. It would define the accounting, and bodies such as SBTi, regulators and disclosure frameworks would decide what counts towards targets or compliance. SBTi, ISO and EFRAG sit on the technical working group, so alignment is intended. Even so, companies would need to track how each programme adopts the statements.