What is the GHG Protocol?
The GHG Protocol is a family of standards and guidance for measuring and managing greenhouse gas emissions, from WRI and WBCSD.
Why it matters
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol builds on a partnership between the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Its standards include the Corporate Standard, the Scope 2 Guidance, the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard and the Product Standard. The Corporate Standard covers the seven gases in the Kyoto Protocol.
The GHG Protocol says its Corporate Standard provides the accounting platform for virtually every corporate GHG reporting programme in the world. In 2023, 97% of disclosing S&P 500 companies reported to CDP using the GHG Protocol. Cloud emissions data has to fit its scopes and methods to be usable in a company's disclosures.
An example
A company buying cloud services does not run the data centres or own the servers. Under the GHG Protocol, the emissions from that cloud usage sit in the customer's Scope 3, usually under Category 1, purchased goods and services. Placing them in the right scope and category is what lets the figure sit in the company's inventory next to everything else.
How Greenpixie uses it
Greenpixie's cloud methodology is aligned to the GHG Protocol and references four of its standards:
- the Corporate Standard
- the Scope 2 Guidance, whose location-based method sets usage emissions
- the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard
- the Product Standard, whose recycled content method sets hardware end of life
Usage emissions use regional grid carbon intensity, with sub-national factors where available. No recycling credits are taken at hardware end of life.