10 October, 2025

We attended the inaugural conference of the Carbon Accounting Alliance this week, coming together with consultants, software platform providers and other professionals to take a step away from our day-to-day work and think about how to advance the carbon accounting profession.  

There are plenty of challenges facing the industry: how to ensure consistency across calculations, how to use data to promote real-world decarbonisation and how we can professionalise the industry and build integrity. And it’s both reassuring to share these issues with other people working on the same issues – the day was described in the opening session as ‘group therapy for carbon accountants’ – but also essential for overcoming them. 

The day was structured around panel sessions and talks covering emissions factors, scope 2 and alternatives for measuring impact from organisations across the sector including the standards bodies. There was plenty of insight, provocation and problem solving and it was great to have a range of voices from across the industry in the room. This included some more details of what the GHG Protocol and ISO’s partnership means in practice, emerging frameworks for quantifying impact beyond the annual GHG inventory, and updates on a collaboration to make hybridised emissions factors more available. And in line with the conference’s ‘bias for action’, the last part involved splitting off into small groups for a ninety-minute workshop to address specific issues. 

The word ‘accounting’ may not evoke much excitement or thoughts of impact, but it was an inspiring day to help focus efforts on one of the most pressing issues of our time. Effectively measuring GHG emissions is an essential foundation for tackling climate change and it’s exciting to be part of the active and inspiring efforts to accelerate carbon accounting. 

By Patrick Bapty