Technical Expert Panel on Carbon Accounting

The mission of ICC is to make business work for everyone, every day, everywhere by promoting international trade and investment systems that foster peace, prosperity and opportunity for all. Our neutrality and independence is the key determinant of our ability to build trusted relationships with policymakers and international organisations – and is the hallmark of the products and services we provide to companies, large and small, to enable cross border commerce. We support multilateralism as the best way to address global challenges and are uniquely positioned as a globally connected and representative business organisation to speak with authority on behalf of enterprises from all sectors in every region of the world.

Through a unique mix of advocacy, solutions and standard setting, we champion the needs of businesses, large and small, in global decision-making and in leveraging private sector know how to deliver solutions that turn interconnected challenges into opportunity for all. ICC will contribute its experience and expertise to help our global members ensure carbon accounting provides a level playing field for competition, a cost effective way to address climate change and a practical implementation approach that is for businesses of all sizes and in all geographies.

ICC has a long history of developing globally adopted, practical standards that support the real economy and reflect our deep commitment to the Paris Agreement goals, as well as to accelerating decarbonisation, innovation and investment. We also act as a neutral convener, bridging business, policymakers and standard setters to create frameworks that work in practice.

ICC represents the collective voice of the real economy. Our partnership with Carbon Measures, an independent cross-industry coalition, follows that same tradition: stewarding an independent, expert-led process to explore whether a more coherent and practical global approach to carbon accounting can help markets function more efficiently and effectively to accelerate decarbonisation.

Today’s carbon accounting systems – including company-level reporting frameworks such as the GHG Protocol and facility level measurement, reporting and verification policies- play critical roles in disclosure. However, they primarily focus on company and facility-level reporting without a connection to product-level reporting.

This creates several challenges including reliance on averages and estimates; and difficulty differentiating more carbon efficient products and producers.

As a result, companies investing in decarbonisation are often not clearly distinguished from competitors. This weakens incentives, reduces demand for low-carbon products and slows capital deployment into innovative solutions.

This initiative seeks to address that gap.

The initiative aims to develop a comprehensive global carbon‑emissions accounting framework – grounded in financial‑accounting principles – to support policies aimed at better aligning demand signals with lower‑carbon production, and supporting society’s growing energy needs while driving effective emissions reduction.

The framework aims to:

• Enable accurate, transparent, verifiable and timely data
• Enable product-level carbon accounting that can also support company-level reporting
• Ensure that each tonne of carbon is counted once and attributed correctly along the value chain
• Strengthen incentives for low-carbon production and purchasing decisions
• Support the transfer and trusted use of product carbon information
• Complement existing systems and support global alignment over time.

While we respect many conventions and protocols of the past, our drive to speak out and transform helps us to go further, faster. This initiative is designed to be complementary to the GHG Protocol or ISO standards. Entity-level reporting remains essential for corporate disclosure, risk management and regulatory compliance. The work is intended to apply principles from financial accounting and focus on enabling credible, comparable product-level carbon information that supports effective markets and policy. Better product‑level data can strengthen entity‑level disclosures by reducing reliance on estimates across all emissions scopes.

The work will also consider transaction needs in parallel with accounting methods.  It will define simple principles for how product carbon information moves through the supply chain and how buyers may rely on it. It will publish brief guidance that helps users reflect these principles in their contracts.

The work of the Technical Expert Panel aims to make disclosures more accurate, actionable and decision-useful.

Initial exchanges have already taken place with key standard-setting organisations, with the clear intention to avoid duplication and support convergence over time.

Governance is structured to ensure:

• Independence of the Technical Expert Panel
• Transparency of process
• Engagement with existing initiatives
• Open dialogue across sectors and geographies

ICC’s role is to steward and convene.

At the heart of the initiative is an independent Technical Expert Panel (TEP), that is co-led by ICC and Carbon Measures.

The panel is co-chaired by:

• Amy Brachio, CEO of Carbon Measures
• Karthik Ramanna, Professor at the University of Oxford and the E-ledgers Institute

The Panel is supported by a joint ICC/Carbon Measures Secretariat, represented by:

• Connor Raso, SVP, Global Head of Accounting Standards Development, Carbon Measures and Co-Director of the Technical Expert Panel
• Guillaume De Smedt, Deputy VP Sustainability, Air Liquide and Co-Director of the Technical Expert Panel
• Raelene Martin, Head of Sustainability, ICC
• Sandra Hanni, Head of Climate Policy, ICC

The panel brings together leading experts from academia, financial accounting, industry and civil society, drawn from diverse geographies and disciplines. Its mandate is to independently develop the principles, scope and potential applications of a carbon emissions accounting framework.

The panel operates independently and is focused on technical rigour and practical feasibility.

The work plan is structured in stages:

• Comprehensive inventory of existing carbon accounting approaches
• Development of guiding principles grounded in science and accounting best practice
• Application of principles to develop a set of clear carbon emissions accounting standards
• Product-level implementation roadmaps for real-world deployment
• Governance and ecosystem recommendations, including data management, attestation and assurance, enforcement mechanisms, education and oversight
• Strategic roadmap for adoption at scale, including potential pathways for uptake by policymakers and standard setters

Throughout, the focus is on credibility, comparability, interoperability and practicality.

The initiative will also be supported by an Advisory Group of 25 senior representatives from the private sector and non-profit organisations. The Advisory Group will:

• Provide strategic input
• Act as ambassadors for the initiative
• Support the work through in-kind or financial contributions
• Help ensure business relevance and real-world applicability

The Advisory Group does not direct the technical conclusions of the Expert Panel but provides strategic perspective and support.

Knowledge Partners are organisations or individuals with specific expertise who may:

• Provide technical or advisory services
• Support research and analysis
• Contribute to implementation strategies
• Assist in stakeholder engagement

They will help strengthen the technical depth, implementation and global reach of the initiative.

It is in ICC’s DNA to develop the standards, partnerships and initiatives which chart the course for a more prosperous future. Studies have shown that climate change can be most efficiently addressed with cooperation via markets. Functioning markets with clear accounting principles for market-based solutions can enable acceleration of addressing climate change while also taking into account affordability and facilitating competitiveness.

Markets also work best when information moves efficiently and can be trusted.  The initiative will set high-level principles so that product carbon information can be used with confidence in trading, financing and insurance.

With credible product-level carbon data, supported by universal principle-based accounting rules for market-based solutions, the following should be enabled:

• Facilitate the market to differentiate products and align incentives for more carbon-efficient production
• Allow policy markets to design effective carbon intensity standards
• Provide investors with increased confidence about future demand for more carbon efficient products

By exploring a framework that provides clearer product-level carbon attribution, the initiative aims to strengthen demand signals, support innovation and enable market-based decarbonisation at lowest cost.

ICC is supportive of frameworks and initiatives that bring greater clarity, transparency and credibility of company emissions reductions efforts across the full value chain, by providing them with a clear pathway that also enables greater visibility for Scope 3 Emissions, as part of their broader climate strategies.

The focus of this initiative is centred on the development of product-level accounting and government mandated standards that incentivise businesses to invest in, buy and sell increasingly more carbon efficient products and services. That will require a system that can deliver timely, verifiable data linked to product transactions – a fundamentally different task from corporate reporting. The framework will define clear options for moving product carbon information through the value chain. Each option will be paired with basic documentation and simple reliance principles to support timely, transaction-level use. This will allow companies, consumers and regulators to differentiate products effectively.

Visibility across the full value chain is essential. A ledger-based system can highlight areas to focus on, provide timely, transaction-level data, and improve supply chain transparency, supporting accurate accounting, targeted action, and market-ready product differentiation.

This framework would be designed with interoperability in mind, meaning it could be used to satisfy disclosures across existing systems and standards, including Scope 3. We will also seek alignment with common contracting practice so the principles can be used across sectors and regions.

The initiative is committed to transparency and engagement throughout the process. ICC will provide regular updates on progress of the initiative and extend invitations for contribution as opportunities for stakeholder engagement arise.

ICC will also continue dialogue with standard setters, regulators and industry bodies.

Please contact us should you have any further questions.