Exxon-backed coalition sets out goals to fix carbon accounting

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🗞️ Driving the news: A new Exxon-backed coalition, Carbon Measures, has launched an initiative to shift global carbon accounting toward product-level emissions — a major challenge to the supply-chain-based Scope 3 model used by most large companies.

🔭 The context: Announced in São Paulo ahead of COP30, the group includes BASF, Banco Santander, and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners
• Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods argued that current Scope 3 rules unfairly assign companies responsibility for customers’ emissions, saying it is “like holding McDonald’s responsible for the weight of its customers”
• Carbon Measures is forming an independent expert panel, co-hosted by the International Chamber of Commerce, to advance a ledger-based framework created by Oxford’s Karthik Ramanna and Harvard’s Robert Kaplan
• Their method counts each unit of carbon once, allocating it to products as they move through the value chain — avoiding the double counting that critics say plagues Scope 3 reporting

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: The initiative directly challenges the dominance of the GHG Protocol, used by 97% of S&P 500 companies and fully embedded in ISSB and European reporting rules
• Supporters say product-level accounting could clarify climate impacts and drive low-carbon innovation
• Opponents warn it may weaken pressure on high-emitting sectors by sidelining supply-chain responsibility — potentially eroding the credibility of corporate net-zero strategies

⏭️ What's next: GHG Protocol and ISO are already working to harmonise their own unified global standard
• Carbon Measures insists it aims for practical solutions, not rival standards — but experts warn that competing frameworks could create confusion for companies, auditors and investors
• With 19 corporate members already involved, including Adnoc, Bayer, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the debate is set to intensify during COP30

💬 One quote: “Everything material must be counted — only once.” — Karthik Ramanna, University of Oxford

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