In late March 2026, the GHG Protocol published a newsletter and an accompanying white paper that launched a 60-day public consultation running through 31 May 2026. The proposal at the center of that consultation is a significant structural change: a multi-statement reporting framework that would break apart the traditional single emissions inventory into several distinct statements, each covering a different type of climate information.
Under the draft structure, companies would produce a market-based inventory covering Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, a separate GHG impact statement, and additional statements for non-GHG indicators. The intent is to distinguish between direct operational emissions, contractual instruments such as energy attribute certificates, and broader climate impacts that currently get compressed or lost inside a single aggregated number. Supporters of the approach argue that separating these layers would make reports more transparent and more analytically useful for investors and other decision-makers who need to understand what a company has actually done versus what it has procured or offset.
The practical relevance is clearest for companies that use market instruments as part of their decarbonisation strategy. Biomethane purchases, green steel procurement, sustainable aviation fuel certificates, and similar interventions currently sit awkwardly inside most reporting frameworks. A multi-statement structure would give organisations a defined place to show the effect of those instruments, separated from the underlying operational emissions they are intended to address. That distinction matters because the gap between what operations emit and what market instruments are expected to achieve has been a recurring source of confusion and credibility risk in corporate climate disclosures.
The multi-statement proposal is not arriving in isolation. Separate coverage from April 2026 indicates that the GHG Protocol is also considering stricter Scope 3 requirements as part of the broader standards revision, including a 95% completeness threshold and a new Category 16 that would capture facilitated emissions and licensing-related emissions that currently fall outside standard category definitions. Together, these changes suggest an organisation trying to close the gaps in comparability, completeness, and confidence that have weakened the credibility of reported data across the market.
The consultation window closes at the end of May 2026. For reporting teams and software providers, the direction of travel is now clear even if the final rules are not. A framework that separates inventory types, tightens completeness requirements, and adds new emission categories will require changes to data collection workflows, factor libraries, and the way systems map activity data to reporting outputs. Starting to map those implications now, before the standard is finalised, is the more defensible approach.
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