Counting Carbon: Voluntary and Mandatory Emissions Reporting Programs

Governments around the world are developing policies to address the “carbon loophole” by differentiating between internationally traded products based on their carbon intensity. While these initiatives differ in the scope of emissions they cover, each will require clearly defined, verifiable, administratively feasible, and interoperable processes for determining the carbon intensity of traded products. This paper examines existing voluntary and mandatory emissions reporting programs and assesses the extent to which they provide a foundation for the product-level carbon accounting that will be necessary to address the carbon loophole.