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Carbon accounting: the foundation of your company's transition

A carbon footprint is the central instrument for companies that want to make their greenhouse gas emissions transparent and contribute to the goals of the Paris Agreement. An accurate footprint, at company or at product level, shows where emissions arise and is the precondition for targeted action to reduce them.

A company-level footprint, the corporate carbon footprint, captures all direct and indirect emissions arising from business activity. A product-level footprint, the product carbon footprint, looks at the emissions of a single product across its life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.

Regulatory requirements and transparency

In Europe, more and more companies have to measure their emissions and report on them. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) require detailed emissions disclosures. This covers the corporate carbon footprint as much as the product carbon footprint, depending on whether the focus is the organisation as a whole or individual products. The EU Taxonomy and the SFDR impose requirements of their own to improve climate transparency.

Why the carbon footprint matters

A carbon footprint is not only a regulatory obligation. It is also a steering instrument for decarbonisation and the basis of your transition plan. Without it, the disadvantages are concrete:

Cost exposure: The design of EU carbon pricing, including EU ETS 2, free allocation and price caps, is politically in flux. Without a reliable footprint you cannot assess your own cost exposure under the various scenarios.

Financing terms: Banks increasingly link lending terms to ESG metrics and ask corporate clients for their own carbon data as part of the credit process.

Investor requirements: Under the SFDR, asset managers have to disclose the emissions of their investee companies, known as financed emissions. Without reliable data from those companies they cannot meet their own reporting obligations.

Efficiency losses: A Scope 1 and 2 footprint reveals energy costs that can often be reduced at short notice.

The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and the scopes

The internationally recognised framework for carbon reporting is the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, the most widely used basis for carbon accounting worldwide. It divides a company's emissions into three categories, known as scopes:

Scope 1 covers direct emissions from your own buildings, such as boilers and turbines, and from your own assets such as machinery and vehicles. Process emissions belong here
too, for instance in cement production or waste treatment.
Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased energy such as electricity, district heating and district cooling.
Scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions along the value chain, upstream for instance from business travel and purchased goods, downstream for instance from recycling, waste treatment or investments.

Science-based targets (SBTi)

Science-based reduction targets are built on the carbon footprint. The internationally recognised standard for them is the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). More than 10,000 companies and financial institutions have had their climate targets validated against its criteria.

On 11 June 2026 the SBTi published the Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0, the most comprehensive revision of the framework since its introduction in 2021. The emphasis shifts from target setting alone towards implementation, governance and demonstrable progress. The main changes are these:

Categorisation: Every company is assigned to Category A or Category B. The criteria include turnover from EUR 450 million and a headcount from 1,000, and for companies based in high-income countries additionally their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and further size criteria. Category A companies report in full, including mandatory Scope 3 targets, assurance and publication of the transition plan. Category B companies face reduced requirements.

Separate targets per scope: Aggregated targets spanning several scopes are no longer permitted. Each scope needs its own, methodologically coherent target.

Scope 3 by materiality: Categories accounting individually for less than five per cent of total Scope 3 emissions can be left out of mandatory target setting.

Mandatory transition plans with board-level accountability for all companies, with Category A companies also publishing theirs.

For newly submitted targets the standard applies from 1 February 2028, and companies can adopt it voluntarily from February 2027. The previous version remains available in parallel until the end of January 2028.

A special case for banks, insurers and asset managers: FINZ

Financial institutions face an important exception in both accounting and target setting. Where at least five per cent of turnover comes from financial services, financed and insured emissions, that is Scope 3 category 15, fall not under the general Scope 3 target methods but under the separate SBTi Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard (FINZ). It requires near-term portfolio targets as well as a long-term target to 2050, either as a portfolio alignment target or as a sector target following the PCAF methodology, together with specific exclusions such as an immediate end to project finance for new fossil fuel developments.

At most banks, insurers and asset managers, more than 90 per cent of emissions sit in this category 15. FINZ is therefore the standard that actually governs them, not the general Scope 3 criteria.

There is more on this in our blog post "Neuer SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 und was er für Unternehmen bedeutet". For companies reporting under the CSRD and the ESRS, the SBTi matters twice over. The ESRS require disclosure of whether emission reduction targets are science-based, and an SBTi validation covers that requirement directly. For the transition plan under ESRS E1-1, the SBTi itself recommends following the ESRS provisions.

Our services

Carbon accounting and emissions calculation: We measure your emissions in detail, for the company as a whole and for individual products. The basis is internationally recognised standards such as the GHG Protocol, together with the requirements under the ESRS and the SFDR.
Financed and insured emissions under PCAF: For banks, insurers and asset managers we account for emissions from loans, investments and underwriting to the PCAF standard, including classification along the PCAF data quality scores and audit-ready documentation of assumptions, data sources and methodological decisions.
Science-based targets (SBTi): We support you from target setting through to submission, including the move to the Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, the classification into Category A or B, and the question of which Scope 3 categories cross the materiality threshold. Financial institutions we support with target setting under the FINZ standard.
Reduction measures and strategies: Working from your footprint, we develop action plans that range from optimising production processes through the use of renewable energy to decarbonising the supply chain.
Transition plan and reporting: We support you with the reporting obligations under the CSRD, the ESRS, the EU Taxonomy and the SFDR, and make sure that your carbon footprint, your targets and your transition plan fit together and hold up to external assurance.
Investment in climate action: We advise you on investments in technologies and climate projects that reduce your emissions over the long term and support your sustainability targets.
Decarbonising the business model: We embed emission reduction structurally in the business model, in a way that is evidenced, audit-ready and robust against the tightened requirements on environmental claims.

Whether it is a corporate carbon footprint, a product carbon footprint or financed emissions under PCAF, we will work out with you where you stand and what the next sensible step is.