Talk:Carbon accounting

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The contents of the Enterprise carbon accounting page were merged into Carbon accounting on 5 April 2017. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

The contents of the Greenhouse gas accounting page were merged into Carbon accounting on 30 June 2020. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

Section sizes Section size for Carbon accounting (36 sections) Section name Byte count Section total (Top) 4,812 4,812 Origins 5,190 5,190 Drivers 12 10,496 Internal company drivers 1,009 1,009 Governmental requirements 8,138 8,138 Non-governmental organization programs 1,337 1,337 Frameworks and standards 2,276 34,077 Corporate/local government standards 1,031 18,204 Greenhouse Gas Protocol 5,322 5,322 ISO 14064 2,490 2,490 PAS 2060 933 933 EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program 1,592 1,592 Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures 1,332 1,332 Protocols for cities/communities 5,504 5,504 Product accounting standards 4,452 4,452 Project accounting standards 3,278 9,145 ISO 14064 Part 2 849 849 GHG Protocol standards for projects and policies 1,500 1,500 Verified Carbon Standard (VERRA) 1,200 1,200 Gold Standard 2,318 2,318 Other applications 282 7,909 Renewable energy credits 3,076 3,076 National emissions inventories 1,179 1,179 Net Zero goals and GHG disclosure 3,372 3,372 Effectiveness 7,326 7,326 Limitations 9,898 9,898 Current trends 20 10,791 Standards alignment and interoperability 2,703 2,703 Support for net zero goals 1,156 1,156 Managing Scope 3 emissions 1,813 1,813 Voluntary carbon markets 1,299 1,299 Alternative validation approaches 3,800 3,800 See also 429 429 References 28 5,216 Other books, reports and journals cited 5,188 5,188 External links 1,203 1,203 Total 97,347 97,347

On 3 January 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved to Greenhouse gas accounting. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

A fact from Carbon accounting appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 June 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that laughing gas is serious stuff in carbon accounting? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Carbon accounting.

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 October 2020 and 16 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dubais.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:45, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Already earlier in 2011, people argued against simply listing carbon accounting software here: "This is really not a Wikipedia article at all, just a list of adverts. There's even a link to "Follow Us on Twitter" on one of the entries!". So, instead of putting such links here, an overview on them might be more suitable. Any opinions? Ingmar.lippert (talk) 12:22, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I created a new list article, and merged the data from this article to that one: List of carbon accounting software. The new list article is discriminate, focused, structured and specific to carbon accounting software. Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:16, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I propose to expand the article by providing an explanation of carbon and accounting; using work by Donald MacKenzie as a reference. I would also explain some of the standards used for carbon accounting. Ingmar.lippert (talk) 23:05, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It currently says "Carbon accounting is the accounting process undertaken to measure the amount of carbon dioxide equivalents that will not be released into the atmosphere as a result of Flexible Mechanisms projects under the Kyoto Protocol." This definition seems very restricted and especially does not correspond how it is used in practice for at least two significant reasons: a) carbon accounting often refers to how many emissions are actually produced/emitted. thus, carbon accounting for emission reductions is simply a specific part of carbon accounting. b) carbon accounting relating to the Kyoto Protocol is also only one of many reasons why an organisation (like a government or a corporation or even an individual) may perform carbon accounting. If nobody reacts to this, I will rewrite the current formulation accordingly.Ingmar.lippert (talk) 23:05, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems all right at this time, in which the wording is, "One form of Carbon accounting is...", which states the Kyoto Protocol as an example (one form). Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:35, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody proposed merging the page Enterprise carbon accounting with Carbon accounting. As both pages cover similar territory, this seems to make sense. Currently the two pages present quite different approaches to the topic. It would benefit the reader to have one page that reviews the technicalities and controversies around enterprise/corporate and non-corporate carbon accounting. Ingmar.lippert (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2014 (UTC)  Done Klbrain (talk) 13:00, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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The maintenance template at the top of this page mentions a confusing structure and lead. In reviewing the references, it also seems like many are either out of date, don’t support the text they reference, are related to company specific promotional type pages (i.e. ecometrica), have broken links (or no links at all), or don’t meet WP:RS criteria – for example, primary sources or sources without a demonstration of vetting/peer review/editorial control. As part of the Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication of environment SDGs project, I’m proposing that this article be restructured with updated topics and more up-to-date references. The outline shown below lists the revised themes and proposed references (including some from the current version of the article).

Sections Proposed for Modification/Elimination

There is a lot of great work that went into creating this current article, and I want to preserve as much of it as I can. There are a few sections, though, that I do propose to significantly modify or delete. These include:

• Greenhouse gas accounting and carbon accounting in corporations - I suggest that these section be combined into the “History” and “Carbon accounting drivers” sections listed in the outline below.
• Enterprise carbon accounting - I would suggest deleting this section. The principles here are very similar to those described in the GHG protocol, the Carbon Disclosure Project, TCFD, ISO 14064, and other standards mentioned in the article. In addition, there is no citation for the majority of the text in this section, and the one source cited (#15 -Groom Energy) does not appear to be a reliable source.
• Life cycle analysis of ECA - I suggest rewriting this to more closely serve as a summary of “GHG Protocol: Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting”, and “ISO 14067” standards.

Use of Existing References

I tried to Incorporate as many of the references from the current article that seemed appropriate. Presently, I would suggest keeping references (as of 11/29/22) # 14, 22, 24, 32 and most of the GHG protocol and ISO related references at #s 33-53 (though similar references may also work for these). The others seemed either outdated, had non-functioning links, were promotional type articles/links from specific companies, like ecoMetrica, were an academic paper that seemed somewhat off-topic for this particular article, were a source that did not seem to support the text being referenced, or were sources in other languages (i.e. #56-Ubbesen). Some older, primary source citations may justified where the article needs to reference a standard by an organization responsible for that standard, such as some of the GHG and ISO protocol citations.

Revised Outline

Below is a revised organization (excluding the lead) and updated references. This isn’t finalized text, just a list of the main elements/ideas that would be in each section (headings shown in bold, subsections are underlined), along with the relevant sources for them. The overall framework of the outline to a large extent mimics the GHG protocol framework, with its focus on corporate accounting, project accounting, and product accounting. Notes in italics indicate how current sections are incorporated into this proposal, identify “major article” or “see also” links that would appear at the top of each proposed section, as well as other minor notes related to specific components in the outline.

- - - - - - - - -Proposed Outline and References- - - - - - - - -

Lead

Outline for the lead will be included once/if there seems to be support for this proposal.

History

• 1995 IPCC guidelines four countries to report on emissions from key sectors; 1997 Kyoto protocol and procedures for carbon offset projects; 1997 BP efforts to report and reduce GHG emissions; 1998 publication safe climate sound business an action agenda by Monsanto, GM, and World Resources Institute; 2001 World Resources Institute/WBCSD collaboration and first edition of GHG protocol Note - this would incorporate the paragraph from the Cooperation: ISO, WRI, and WBCSD section (Greene 2010 pp.6-11)
• 2015 Paris Agreement - Article 6 and TCFD Development (Guthrie/CDSB 2017, pp.6-12)

Carbon accounting drivers - Note: This would incorporate some of the information in the “Greenhouse gas accounting” and “Carbon accounting in corporations”, and “Mandatory greenhouse gas reporting” sections. The existing text would be updated.

• Internal
  • Managing climate change related risks, energy cost savings, preparation for regulatory requirements, impacts on corporate brand, consideration in acquisitions, evidence of corporate social responsibility . Voluntary programs in support of net zero goals. (Condon/EHS 2017, OECD 2012 p.27, Carbon Disclosure Project 2022 pp.3-4, GHGP Corporate Standard Box1, OECD 2015 pp18-19)
  • Current extent of voluntary carbon accounting - i.e. 81% of S&P 500 reporting Scope 1 in 2020 (Lopucki 2022 p.436)
• Governmental/regulatory *Main Articles: Carbon emissions trading, European Union Emissions Trading System, Clean Development Mechanism, Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
  • Government Requirements for Corporate Accounting
    • General categories: Corporate laws, environmental laws, corporate governance, market based mechanisms (OECD 2015 pp.16-17)
    • Over 40 countries with reporting requirements (WRI 2015) Examples structures include:
      • UK mandatory carbon reporting (Carbon Trust 2019, Citation #14 pp.25-44, Citation #32)
      • EPA GHGRP (EPA 2021) - facility rather than corporate focused
      • French Law Article 173 (Guthrie/CDSB 2017 pp.9-10, PRI 2016 pp.7-8)
      • 2022 SEC Rules ( Grabar 2022, Colvin 2022, Cadwalader 2022) Note:Possible reliable source (user generated) issues with some of these.
    • GHG emissions trading Systems
      • EU, CA Trading Systems (EC 2022, CA-ARB 2022, Stillwater 2018)
      • CORSIA International Aviation Trading System (ICAO 2022)
    • Monitoring under the Clean Development Mechanism (ADB 2016 pp.10-25) , now under Article 6.2 - Paris Agreement (Carbon Markets Express, ADB 2018 pp.4-7)
    • Other Carbon Credit Systems
      • REDD+ MRV program (CRS 2021 pp.9-13, Kim 2021 pp.2-5)

Carbon accounting/GHG Reporting frameworks and standards

• Corporate Accounting *Main Articles: ISO 14064, Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures, Wikipedia-DE GHG protocol site? Note - There is a need for a GHG protocol article in WP.
  • Standards include: GHG, GRI, Climate Registry, EPA GHGRP, GRESB, Petroleum Institute, Mining Metals Council, CDP Guidance, TCFD, and SASB (Lopucki -pp. 425-433); general cross standard provisions described at: OECD 2015 p.15
  • GHG protocol Note-This section would partially be based on (with citation/text updates where needed), what is currently in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Reporting, and Mandatory GHG reporting sections of the article
    • History/Development (Citations #37, 38)
    • Principles include: Relevance, Completeness, Consistency, Transparency, Accuracy (WRI2007 p.9), (GHGP p7.)
    • Covers the greenhouse gases regulated under the Kyoto Protocol
    • Scope 1 - all direct emissions, i.e. from sources within the corporate boundaries (WRI2007 p.21, Citation #s 44, 45, 46, 47)
    • Scope 2 indirect emissions from externally generated and purchased electricity, steam, heat and cold (WRI2007 p.21, Citation #s 44, 45, 46, 47)
    • Scope 3 - all other indirect emissions, including those from the manufacture, transportation of purchased goods, or distribution and use of own products, or disposal of waste. Also includes emissions from business trips (Citation #45). Optional under many regulatory programs ((WRI2007 p.21)
    • Predominance of Scope 3 emissions within corporate sector (HarvBusRev 2022, Citations #s 48, 49, 50)
    • GLEC framework for logistics sector reporting (Citation #40) - Note: should this be included?
  • ISO 14064 Note-As with the GHG protocol section, this section would preserve (with citation/text updates where needed), portions of what is currently in the ISO 14064 section of the article.
    • History/Development - Relation to GHG protocol (Green 2010 p.15)
    • Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Citations #34, 35, 36)
  • Cooperation amongst ISO, WRI and WBCSD in protocol development (Greene 2010 pp.15-16 Note – substitutes for Citation #53)
  • EPA greenhouse gas reporting protocol
    • History/development - focus on facilities rather than on corporate wide accounting (CRS 2021)
    • Methodologies-more specific than GHG protocol or ISO 14064 on use of monitoring systems, mass balance approach, default emission factors (EPA 2017)
  • Task force on climate related financial disclosures (Guthrie/CDSB 2017,pp.10-14
    • History - Developments since Paris agreement, role of G20 Financial Stability Board (FSB 2021 pp.1-4)
    • Four thematic areas - governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets (TCFD p.4)
    • Metrics include disclosure recommendations based on GHG Protocol framework (FSB 2021, p.19)
    • Seven principles for effective disclosures (FSB 2021 p.8)
    • Relation to materiality (FSB 2021 p.15)
  • Protocols for cities/communities
    • ICLEI Community Protocol (NatureBasedClimateSolutions), 2019 Forest and Land Use Appendix (ICLEI 2019) GHG protocol for Cities (GHG Protocol)
    • Use of geographic boundaries rather than corporate boundaries.
    • Six main sectors: stationary energy, transportation, waste, Industrial processes and product use (IPPU) agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU), any other emissions occurring outside the geographic boundary as a result of city activities. (GHG Protocol Exec Sum) p.4
    • Reporting guidelines provide a cross reference with Scope 1, 2 and 3 from corporate reporting guide. (GHG Protocol Exec Sum) p.7
    • Reporting to CDP allows cities to transparently track their progress (CDP 2021, CDP Portal 2021)
• Project Accounting *Main articles: Cooperative mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, Verified Carbon Standard, Gold Standard (carbon offset standard)
  • A mixture of standards, methodologies, and full-fledged programs (Carbon offset guide)
  • Four main standards - Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, the Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry. Standards and methodologies operate in an environment that includes developers, brokers and buyers (Forbes 2021) (WWF2008 p.11-12)
  • Principles -Additional, not overestimated, permanent, not claimed by another entity, not associated with significant social or environmental harms, minimum leakage, scientific methodologies, third party verification (SEI 2020 p.18, Grattan Institute 2021 pp.15-16, OneTrust 2022, NICA 2019 pp.24-29, WWF2008 pp.15-19)
  • Enables support of market based approach to support country NDCs, providing robust accounting is included (Gold 2022 p.5)
  • Regulated and voluntary markets (EDF 2021)
    • Current state & demand - International credit mechanisms have been suffering from a lack of demand, but national/subnational markets increasing in popularity (NICA 2019 p.3, Ecosystem MarketPlace p.3 Fig.1), with forestry projects showing highest level of growth-(EDF 2021)
  • Main Standards
    • VERRA
      • Developed in 2005 - most widely used voluntary carbon standard.
      • Projects covering all relevant mitigation sectors (energy, transport, waste, forestry, among others). Includes methodologies for forestry/REDD+, and CDM. (VERRA>Methodologies)
      • Standard of choice for most forest credits generated for the voluntary carbon market, and almost all REDD+ projects. (Chagas et. al. 2020 p.5)
      • Additional criteria to avoid double counting, requirements of additionality, a prohibition on any negative impact on sustainable development in the local community, and requirements for monitoring based on CDM standards. (Carbon footprint)
    • Gold standard
      • Established in 2003, and administered by the Gold Standard Foundation.
      • Open to any non-government, community-based organization, focus is on those with an interest in the promotion of sustainable development or a focus on climate and energy issues.
      • Additional criteria include: stakeholder inclusivity, gender sensitivity, and contributions to a minimum of three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Gold)
    • GHG protocol for projects,
      • Less prescriptive than VERRA or Gold.
      • Key accounting principles include relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, accuracy and conservativeness.
      • Protocol for land use projects still in development, will cover removals, land sector emissions and removals, and biogenic products. (GHG Protocol 2022)
    • Climate Action Reserve, American Carbon Registry - -Note–should these be discussed as well?
    • Strategic Considerations in Project Accounting (Oxford principles)
      • Cut emissions, use high quality offsets, and regularly revise offsetting strategy as best practice evolves
      • Shift to carbon removal offsetting
    • Coalitions forming to define consensus standards and ensure integrity of carbon credit projects (ICVCM), (VCMII)

• Product accounting/product carbon footprints Note: this section would include portions of what is currently in Life cycle analysis of ECA section *Main articles: Environmental Product Declaration, Life cycle assessment
  • Part of a broader set of Life Cycle Assessment approaches (DeSchryver 2022) (Meinrenken 2020) (Citation #22)
  • GHG Protocol for Products (GHG Product Protocol, WSP 2022)
    • Similar to GHG protocol Scope 3, but focused on life cycle/value chain impacts for a specific product (GHG Product Protocol p.6)
    • Can be used to help develop corporate Accounting Scope 3 estimates
    • .Same 5 accounting principles apply as with corporate protocol (GHG Product Protocol p 19)
    • .Steps include – setting business goals, defining analysis boundaries, calculating results, analysing uncertainties, and reporting (GHG product protocol p 23, Citation #24)
  • ISO 14067 (ISO.org)
    • Steps include goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, interpretation, and reporting (GHG product protocol p 23)

Policy aspects

• Use in Emission Trading Systems (WRI 2015, CA Air Resources Board)
• Use in National Emissions Inventories (WRI 2014) (EPA)
• Financial reporting requirements and investment concerns – physical risks and transition risks (CRS 2022, WA Post 2022)
• Net zero goals – (Columbia Univ. 2021, Harvard 2021)

Effectiveness and limitations

• Effectiveness
  • Comparisons amongst companies/cities (Lopucki p.450), 100 companies emit 70% of global GHG emissions (Guardian 2017)
  • Transparency-reporting to carbon disclosure project (OECD 2015 p.36)
  • Impact on GHG emission reductions - (Bauckloh 2022, Brooke Whitcomb 2021)
  • Impact on general corporate performance less clear - (Broadstock 2017, Pillo 2017, Bazhair 2022 p.15)
• Limitations/criticisms Note-This includes some of the information from the current Criticism section
  • Corporate/cummunity accounting
    • Various reporting challenges (OECD 2015 p.41)
    • Use of alternate standards, lack of third party verification, inconsistent boundaries for analyses, inconsistent adoption of Scope 3 estimates in corporate reports ( Lopucki pp.460-462)
    • Underreporting of emissions, particularly for Scope 3 – (Gurney 2021, Bloomberg 2021, Klassen 2021)
    • Double counting in supply chains (Citation #58-Caro2011)
  • Project accounting
    • Additionality for Article 6.2 projects- (Gold 2022)
    • Double counting of project reductions – (MIT 2021, Citation #59-Raynaud2015)
    • Non-permanence (Brander 2020)
  • Products
    • Cherry picking, accounting for full life cycle, inappropriate comparisons (Russell 2019)
    • Others??

Future directions

• Integration of regulatory, voluntary standards (EDF 2021 p.4)
• For project accounting, net zero goals and increased focus on carbon sequestration will be major factors (EDF 2021 p.3)
• Expanded use of corporate reporting in National Emissions inventories (WRI 2014) (EPA)
• Emerging approaches for improving municipal reporting/accounting (Mueller 2021)
• Enhanced scrutiny of greenwashing-for all ESG reporting (Salaheldin 2022)
• Use of blockchain for tracking carbon credits (Kuralbayeva 2022, Kim 2020)
• Potential for more integrated reporting (Luers 2022)
• Others??

- - - - - - -End of Outline- - - - - - - -

Questions/request for feedback

I appreciate any feedback on this proposal, but would be specifically interested in thoughts on the following:

• Are there references/citations from the original article that should still be included here that are not listed?
• Do you see any significant concepts from the current article that don’t appear to be in this current outline, but should be?
• Is the list of topics in this outline complete? Are there topics that could be removed (for example, EPA’s GHGRP program)
• The Wikipedia.de link for the GHG protocol - there is not currently an English Wikipedia article equivalent – should a Google translate version of this article be linked to for the time being?
• For project accounting, to what extent should the article mention the transactional aspects, like registration crediting? Or should it strictly focus on the accounting/monitoring aspects? Should a short discussion of the Climate Action Reserve and American Carbon Registry be included?

Dtetta (talk) 20:26, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Don’t know the answers to your questions but all your hard work here looks very timely. Because the 500 largest point sources in Climate TRACE now will be thousands next year. So you doing this should help people who are checking whether companies are greenwashing or serious about being low carbon. Suggest you go full speed ahead Chidgk1 (talk) 16:40, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Chidgk1: and @Crisantom: it looks like you have been significant contributors to this article over the last couple of years, so I would appreciate any thoughts you might have. Dtetta (talk) 20:29, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that support Chidgk1, and for the Climate TRACE link. Will start working on the revision this week. Dtetta (talk) 21:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping. These are fantastic, well-thought out suggestions. For your second and third questions, I think you covered the most significant aspects of the article. As for the fourth question, that seems like something to consider. My knowledge of the topic is by no means as deep as yours but I will try to provide support when I can. - Crisantom (talk) 06:51, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Crisantom for that support. Look forward to working with you on the revision. Dtetta (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Last week I contacted four experts in the field to obtain their thought and suggestions for improving on the outline above. Below are their comments.

- - - -

Comments from an expert requesting to be anonymous-12/1

Corporate/Regulatory Drivers section

• Along with mentioning SEC disclosure requirements, add the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, Japan FSA’s Climate Risk Disclosure regulations, and the International Sustainability Standards Board  proposed disclosure rules.
• Include a mention of procurement related drivers, specifically: UK 2021 government procurement regulations and the US - Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Proposed Rule.
• Mention SBTI as a driver,and note that under these guidelines there are restrictions on the use of offsets.

Reporting Frameworks section

Corporate Reporting Subsection

• The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is commonly referred to as GHG Protocol.
• Remove the discussion of the GLEC framework in the corporate accounting subsection.
• Note that the GHG Protocol is developing a Land Sector and Removals Standard for its corporate reporting guidelines.

Project accounting subsection

• For the bullet regarding the GHG Project protocol - clarify that the focus is on core accounting principles and impact quantification, rather than the programmatic, transactional aspects of carbon credits. It’s not per se an issue of being less prescriptive.

Effectiveness and Limitations section

Limitations subsection

• Add concerns about the quality of carbon credits as an issue.

Future Directions section

• Second bullet - can eliminate the “For project accounting” clause, as this is a broader issue.

- - -

Comments from Derek Broekhoff, SEI – 12/6

• Suggest changing title of article to "Greenhouse gas accounting"

History and Drivers Section

• Highlight TCFD as a driver
• Consider a more prominent mention of of emission inventory accounting as an important early form of attributional accounting

Reporting Frameworks section

• Consider attributional/consequential as an organizing principle for this section, as described by Brander 2022.
• Include mention of GHG protocol Policy and Action Standard and Mitigation Goals Standard.
• Mention SBTI as an offshoot of GHG protocol, note that offsets are excluded.
• Mention ISO Carbon Neutrality standard - Combines elements of both attribution/consequential methods.
• Consider how standards in voluntary market are evolving, with new entrants coming in.

Effectiveness and Limitations section

• Include concept that Carbon offset quality exists along a continuum.
• Consider highlighting that additionality is also subjective and exists on a continuum. SEI 2020 Chapter 4 discussion of project specific and standardized criteria for evaluating is worth highlighting, along with other aspects of Chapter 4.
• Consider including concept that in order to manage Scope 3 emissions, when looking at value chain partners, it’s hard to get good data. Chains are opaque with poor traceability (transparency).

Future Directions section

• Discuss efforts to upgrade CDM protocols to be consistent with Article 6.4. COP 26, including a pathway for transitioning credits.
• How to address perennial concerns about quality of carbon - ICVCM - offshoot of Taskforce for Scaling Carbon Markets – need to shore up integrity to boost confidence and help scale up markets.
• Future trends - Describe mechanisms where company might invest in mitigation upstream i.e. a food processing company investing in sustainable ag, even if they are not sure they are getting the food from the facilities they are supporting.
• Mention carbon credit rating agency startups – not same as auditors who verify credits.

- - -

Comments from Lynn Lopucki, University of Florida-12/6

History and Drivers Section

• Include mention of renewable energy certificates per p.419-420 of Lopucki 2022.
• Highlight reporting and ranking, investor demand, and imminent regulation as drivers.
• Competition with EU regulatory program (SEC mentions this) – EU directive will effect 5-10% - competition amongst these programs to define market. Look at SEC and EU standards – competition as to who is being the most controlling.
• Materiality - single materiality (investors), and double materiality (public) – EU clarifies double materiality.

Effectiveness/Limitations Section

• Importance of ranking – Stakeholder Takeover Project.
• Include mention of World Benchmarking Alliance.
• Carbon disclosure project – not public information – for investors only - not transparent
• SASB and IFRS want to limit reporting to what is relevant to investors.

Future Directions section

• STP brand search app – help consumers be more knowledgeable and provide feedback to companies. My note – has there been a news article reviewing this app/program?

- - -

Comments from Michael Gillenwater – Greenhouse Gas Management Institute-12/9

History/Drivers Section

• Note the specific role of the IPCC Guidelines as a model for current protocols.

Reporting Frameworks section

• Use attribution/consequential paradigm as an organizational approach for this section. In more lay terms, attributional involves allocating emissions to responsible parties and tracking them over time, measuring what is happening. Consequential can be considered to include various interventions and decisions to change emissions.

Future Directions section

• Note the continued need to clarify what GHG accounting metrics are appropriate for what purposes.
• Integration of remote sensing and other “big data” approaches with traditional GHG inventory methods for verification purposes – Vulcan, Climate TRACE.

Dtetta (talk) 20:47, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tomorrow I plan to post a revised lead, along with text for the history, drivers and frameworks sections per the bullet points for those sections. Dtetta (talk) 05:33, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Chidgk1: and @Crisantom: - just posted revisions to the article that cover the outline up to the Project Accounting section. Revised the lead as well to reflect new article content. Some notes on this revision:

• The organization of the drivers section is slightly different from the proposed outline. In addition, I focused the text and citations more on how they affect GHG accounting methods specifically, since that’s what this article is about.
• I as able to used most of the text in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO 14064 sections. There I made some edits and additions, updated citations, and removed some text that seemed redundant or overly detailed.
• I was not able to figure out how to keep much of the text in the Lifecycle Analysis of ECA section - please let me know if you think there are pieces that still belong in the article.
• The lead does not yet reflect the policy aspect, effectiveness/limitations, or future directions portion of the revised article. I left the current last two current lead paragraphs in place, though I expect to change them significantly once the effectiveness/limitations and future directions sections are completed.Dtetta (talk) 05:08, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the topic of the Lifecycle analysis of ECA section. The problem I had in preserving text was that a lot of the information there seemed extraneous to carbon/greenhouse gas accounting specifically. In the revised section I tried to briefly note how the carbon/GHG accounting ideas covered in this article are part of the broader topic of lifecycle analysis(among other things), and how that’s recognized in issues such as Product Carbon Footprints, and ISO 14067 in particular, being part of a broader series of ISO standards for LCA. But there may be other aspects of the original text that are also relevant to this that I didn’t adequately capture.

I also still need to comb through the revised article to add wikilinks where appropriate.Dtetta (talk) 14:06, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for taking so long to finish the revision. Should have the revised text for the Project Accounting subsection, as well as the Policy Aspects and Future Directions sections, posted in the next couple of days. Dtetta (talk) 17:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Chidgk1: and @Crisantom: - I added the section on project accounting today. In order to keep the word count manageable, I did not include detailed discussion of the Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry, though they are mentioned by name in the intro paragraphs. Please let me know if you think either of these programs merits a more detailed mention in this section of the article. Plan to get to the remainder of the article later today and Monday, and still have to work on wikilinks. If anyone else wants to work on wikilinks, that would be great, otherwise I will work on that once the full article is posted:) Dtetta (talk) 19:13, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And thanks, Chidgk1, for the work you’ve already done on removing the maintenance template, adding wikilinks, and improving sentences:) Dtetta (talk) 22:59, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect some readers might be confused by the word “mitigates” but I don’t have a better idea for the first sentence. What do you think? Chidgk1 (talk) 10:06, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. Maybe “. . . an organization emits or mitigatestakes actions to reduce? Dtetta (talk) 14:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

great Chidgk1 (talk) 12:19, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I briefly defined 1 and 2 but brackets are not ideal. Perhaps moving history section to bottom would also help. Chidgk1 (talk) 12:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed they are in a graphic but that text is very small so I missed it first time - other readers may too Chidgk1 (talk) 12:25, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Chidgk1-planning to address this with an improved graphic for the article. See my post below. Dtetta (talk) 02:17, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Chidgk1: and @Crisantom: - I’m nearly finished with my work on this revision. There’s probably a couple of subsections I will add to “Future trends”, a few edits for readibility and completeness, continued work on wikilinks, and some clean up work on a few citations. But those should be relatively minor. I will also be working on the last lead paragraph (will be sure to keep Chidgk1’s reference to Climate Trace).

So I have a few final questions/suggestions I’d be interested in your thoughts on.

• One of the expert reviewers suggested changing the title of the article from Carbon accounting to Greenhouse gas accounting. I agree with this suggestion, as some of the Kyoto protocol GHGs don't have carbon in them. - would you concur with this? Would either of you be willing to make that change in the article title, and create a splash page where Carbon accounting sends a reader to Greenhouse gas accounting (like was done for global warming to climate change)?
• I would like to use the graphic from this WRI webpage to replace the current one in the lead, but I need to work with WRI to get them to give it the appropriate Creative Commons license. I recall reading somewhere where it has a creative Commons license, but I’m not sure if it’s the right one. I prefer this graphic because it’s not as focused on life cycle issues, and clearly calls out scopes 1, 2 and 3, which are a dominant feature in much of the discussion around GHG accounting and reporting. Chidgk1 - I this might also get at the concerns you expressed in your post “Suggest Scopes 1 2 and 3 definitions moved higher up”. Does this make sense?
• One of the suggestions that is part of the Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication of environment SDGs project is that we use long cites rather than short cites. In general I’ve found this to work fairly well. The main problem I have noticed is that when I use a long cite more than once, but with different page numbers, I am not able to use the <ref name=> tag. That seems to fail WP’s internal validation check if any portion of the code between the {{}} punctuation symbols is different, which is the case when you are citing different pages in a report. As a result, the reference list has repeated mentions of the same source when different pages in that report are used to reference different portions of text. I don’t know of a good way around this.

There are also some remaining content/organization issues:

• In the effectiveness subsection, should the effects on a company’s financial performance be included in the discussion?
• I am still considering adding text on the Climate Action Reserve, the American Carbon Registry, and the Global Reporting Initiative.
• Chidgk1 - I noticed you deleted the “Main article” references under the government requirements subsection. I would agree that designating these as Main articles isn’t appropriate, but I do think that they fit the “See also” designation. I personally don’t find it confusing to have several “See also” links. But I’m also OK with leaving them out if you think that’s important. They could just be part of that long list of “See also” links at the bottom of the page, which probably should be edited.
• Regarding the suggestion that the History section be moved to the bottom or the article. My main concern with this is that this particular article is not a broad based scientific article like Climate change. A History section at (or near) the start of this article helps explain how these techniques got to be the way they are, and that seems important. If you look at the Verified Carbon Standard or Gold Standard (carbon offset standard) articles, you’ll see they also start with a brief history discussion. Fracking, an unrelated article that is also about a method/technique, also has history near the top of the article. That’s why I think history should be higher up in the outline, rather than at the bottom, like it is for an article like Climate change. But I am open to other suggestions, if folks want to post an idea here on the talk page.

Thanks again with your support and editing efforts on this! Dtetta (talk) 06:21, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If the below move is agreed after discussion it will have to be done by an admin I think as there is already greenhouse gas accounting Chidgk1 (talk) 06:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree re WRI graphic Chidgk1 (talk) 06:27, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re cites I strongly feel they should be done with Visual Editor so new and IP users can do them. I remember a year or so ago someone was working on a solution to citing the same source with different page numbers - will try and find details when I have time - feel free to ping me if I forget Chidgk1 (talk) 06:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At last I found the thing I was thinking of at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Book_referencing but unfortunately it has been cancelled.

As you are the person editing the article most I suppose you get to choose the cite style. But if it was me I would prefer the Visual Editor as much as possible. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:51, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re govt requirements ‘see also’ or ‘further info ‘ I don’t have strong opinion. Do as you think best Chidgk1 (talk) 06:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with use of visual editor. I did almost all the cites with that, except where I was copying a report cite and using a different page.

Thanks for being flexible on the ‘see also’ and ‘further info’ styling.

Thanks for looking into the same source/different pages issue. Dtetta (talk) 15:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For the page numbers you have to add {{rp|6}} for page 6 at the end of the reference (in source editor). Then it works; I use it all the time like this. Compare for example how we have done it at the climate change mitigation article in several locations (e.g. in the lead).EMsmile (talk) 12:18, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect some of the further reading could be deleted but not sure which Chidgk1 (talk) 06:26, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same thought. In fact, I would delete all of it. I find "further readings" in general not all that useful when it comes to the fast changing topics of climate change. If they're good publications, they should rather be cited as in-line sources. Perhaps in general the "further reading" sections in Wikipedia article are a bit of a "left over" from the days when not all content was getting in-line citations? Not sure. EMsmile (talk) 12:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think those are good suggestions. From a cursory review, the only reference from that list that I would keep is the GHG protocol, which is already cited. The input-output issue described in some of these references is briefly mentioned in a few of the citations in the article itself. But it seemed a bit too detailed to be included in the text. Let's wait and see if there are any objections to this proposal in the next few days, and, if not, I will just go ahead and delete the list. Dtetta (talk) 17:55, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've deleted the list now as there were no further comments or objections in the last 5 days. EMsmile (talk) 12:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Dtetta,

Once the above rename request has been done (or rejected) I think you could nominate it per Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions. I know you want to do a bit more but a reviewer is not likely to start for months and even if they started tomorrow it is past the “quick fail” stage.

I think the main advantage of this is that the reviewer probably won’t be in the climate change project. Thus they will almost certainly pick up a lot of readability issues which we would not be able to spot because of our prior knowledge.

And you get a lovely green plus for all your hard work and 6 hours of fame on Wikipedia:Did you know Chidgk1 (talk) 07:16, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that suggestion Chidgk1 - I will try to get that started later this week:) Dtetta (talk) 17:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember right the rename guidelines say to wait at least a week for comments so I won’t rename until next week. It will be easier for you to wait until after rename before submitting Chidgk1 (talk) 06:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Understand - thanks! Dtetta (talk) 06:45, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dtetta As it was not renamed I think you should nominate it for good article now. As the article is extremely dry I doubt anyone will review it any time soon unless they are seeking a cure for insomnia! Chidgk1 (talk) 15:02, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's perhaps still a bit too early for that. We don't want the reviewers to tell us things that we already know. In this case, I think the article needs some images (by the way, I don't understand why you have added that one at the end now; the caption is unclear to me). About one image per visible page would be awesome. Also the article could do with readability improvements. It's currently very hard to understand due to the use or jargon, technical terms, long sentences. - It's a fascinating topic. I currently don't have time to involve myself deeply in this. Just wanted to caution to jump to a GA review process too hastily. What could be gained from approaching reviewers already now? Or are you saying you would start the process now but while waiting for a reviewer to become available (could be weeks, months?), one continues to improve the article oneself? EMsmile (talk) 18:02, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The latter. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone for that good discussion. Looked through Wikipedia:Good article criteria, and it seems like this article is in pretty good shape, except for the Illustration criterion. Plan to go ahead and initiate the nomination process as Chidgk1 suggests, and will work on getting a better image for the top of the article that covers Scopes 1, 2 and 3 at the same time. Dtetta (talk) 16:19, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just initiated the nomination process with an edit at the top of this page. Thanks for that suggestion Chidgk1! Dtetta (talk) 19:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that the German Wikipedia version has a different first sentence in the lead (translated): Carbon accounting describes the systematic recording, monetary and non-monetary evaluation and monitoring of direct and indirect emissions of CO ₂ and other greenhouse gases. This is quite different to our first sentence of Greenhouse gas accounting or carbon accounting is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas (GHG) an organization emits. Which source do we use that limits the definition of carbon accounting to just organizations? Might be useful to add that source to the first sentence (leads don't have to use in-line citations, although I think more and more they do use inline citations - those are also useful when leads are transcribed by use of excerpts). This lead currently uses only one in-line citation. EMsmile (talk) 13:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done Chidgk1 (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that Chidgk1! I think I noted in my post “ Notes on Current Revision (1/1/23)” that I still had work to do on citations and the lead. Agree that there are probably some additional citations needed for the lead - so far my focus there has been on readability. Plan to work on that over the next couple of days. And although it's nice to get a perspective from other language versions (I had proposed in my outline a link to a google translate version of the WP.de article on Greenhouse Gas protocol), that particular sentence has a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of over 20-Yikes! Dtetta (talk) 22:32, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The GHG protocol Corporate standard also uses the work "organization" repeatedly, but Chidgk1's citation works fine in this instance. Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just a minor point: I am a little bit surprised surprised you added a new publication, User:Chidgk1 rather than be able to reuse one that had already been used in the article. Is the one that you added really a highly reliable source (secondary preferred)? If so, I am surprised it is only cited once in the article. Just wondering. Interestingly, it is the only ref in the list now that mentions "carbon accounting" whereas all the others mention "greenhouse gas accounting". EMsmile (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Secondly: does that mean that the intro sentences in the German Wikipedia (which does not limit it to organisation) is wrong? It says there (after translation to English with Google Translate; bolding added by me): Carbon accounting describes the systematic recording, monetary and non-monetary evaluation and monitoring of direct and indirect emissions of CO ₂ and other greenhouse gases.  This can be done at product or project level, at company level or at state level to create a greenhouse gas balance sheet. Or is it possible that different definitions have been used in the literature? I see on Google that most of the hits limit it to organisations (or even just products) but occasionally the definition given includes also "organisations and countries". If there are different definitions in the literature then I would recommend to add a new section called "definitions" where this is explained. I find that quite useful. We did that also for the climate change mitigation article, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Definitions_and_scope. EMsmile (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think it’s wrong, it just sidesteps that aspect. Dtetta (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Like I mentioned above (see the section Notes on Current Revision (1/1/23)), the page numbers should be added with the rp-template, e.g. {{rp|6}}. As far as I can see, this is becoming the standard for all articles with the long citation style. The long citation style is also becoming more common than the short citation style, at least within WikiProject Climate Change (see also here). It overcomes the problem of having to list the same ref several times in the article. So I think it should be implemented now. EMsmile (talk) 12:52, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree strongly - I think the rp snippet approach is a poor choice. I used it for the ocean acidification article, and was very dissatisfied with the way the text looked. I don’t know how we can expect a reader to easily understand the reference page being referred to when there is an adjacent, small, unclear page number next to the citation number. I certainly wouldn’t understand what that meant if I just came upon it when reading an article, and I read a lot of wikipedia articles. I don’t see this done in any scientific literature that I have read. For the time being, I think a much better way to deal with paginated reports that are used multiple times is to use short cites, with a “reports cited” section at the bottom of the article, as is done on the main climate page article, and other GA articles (as was pointed out in the Wikipedia talk:IPCC citation/AR6 discussion you referred to). Longer term, this seems like a WP tech support (or village pump) issue. The WP techies should be able to create a citation bot (they already have several) that can look at two long form report citations that are identical except for page number, and create some type of Ibid format where the citation in the reference list just shows the title and year (with a link of course), and then the page number. Dtetta (talk) 16:08, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The rp syntax seems to be the recommended way that Wikipedia offers for the long ref style. I am surprised you dislike it so much. Readers are free to click on it or to ignore it. They can hover over it to find out what it is. Until the tech people come up with a different solution, it's the only way that avoids repeating the same ref multiple times in the ref list. The short ref style has its own disadvantages which I've written about earlier but can repeat: it's very very difficult to use for newbies. It does not work well when text blocks are moved from one article to another. I remember now that we had a discussion about it here already. There seemed to be no objections to using the rp style there. If you want, we can try to re-start the discussion there? Could be good to reach consensus so that the climate change articles follow a consistent style. EMsmile (talk) 16:19, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've now written on the talk page of WikiProject CC about this as I see it as a broader issue, not specific to this article. Would be nice to be consistent across climate change articles. Let's see if anyone else has an opinion about it. EMsmile (talk) 16:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, there are lots of articles that use the rp syntax, see e.g. climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation. A tool tip appears when people hover over it. And Wikipedia is not the same as a scientific publication so just because scientific publications don't do it like this is not an issue, in my opinion. EMsmile (talk) 16:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It’s clear you have talked about it and used it a number of times (including on those pages you mention), but I don’t see broad support for it. The Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change link you referred in saying we discussed it wasn’t really a discussion, it was just a number of posts by you, with me adding one point of reference. That was before I began using it for the OA article. I now regret that choice. It will be interesting to see if you get any responses on WikiProject Climate to support your proposal. Dtetta (talk) 16:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That may be so. However, my experience with trying to start discussions amongst Wikipedians is this: if they don't reply to an invitation to discuss something then they don't feel strongly about it, or at least don't object to it. Meaning in this case: they don't object to me using the standard rp syntax style. Let's see if a consensus emerges and see what others think. Until the IT team comes up with a different solution, I think the rp syntax is the only workable solution we have for the long ref style. Having multiple entries for the same ref in a ref list is not elegant in my opinion. EMsmile (talk) 17:04, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a strong opinion, but just wanted to say that the rp citation variant is not the recommended variant. In fact, it's much less used than sfn. In case of disagreement about the citation style, the old status quo is to be followed (WP:CITEVAR). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The old status quo for this article is to use the long ref style (at least going back to say 2015, or how far back does one have to check?)? So as per WP:CITEVAR, we continue to use long ref style, right? And in long ref style, the page numbers should be added with the rp citation variant, or am I mistaken? Perhaps there is another method on how to add page numbers that I am not aware of? Currently the page numbers are added in the references list which leads to the same publication being shown multiple times in the ref list. That's what I find problematic. The rp syntax would avoid this. EMsmile (talk) 18:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I recall, the article citations in the earlier version were almost all referencing web sites or journal articles, where a long form citation is certainly appropriate and easier. I don’t think any of them cited different pages in a paginated report to cite different parts of the text (and they certainly did not use the rp code snippet approach), so I don’t think they are a useful reference for going forward on this topic. The Citing multiple pages of the same source subsection of WP:CS lists two realistic options for taking a reader to different pages in a document where that document is used multiple times: 1)the rp code approach, which, as I have mentioned above, creates strange looking, hard to understand citations, like current citation 19 in the Ocean Acidification article (which I unfortunately created, but would not do again); and 2)short cites. As part of applying for GA status for this article, my suggestion is to convert those instances where multiple pages of a report are cited in different text locations to short cites. It would be nice if the WP tech group could create a bot that would resolve this in an Ibid type fashion when you are copying long cites and just changing the page number, but in the mean time I believe short cites would better comport with GA standards, as Femke previously noted at Wikipedia talk:IPCC citation/AR6. Dtetta (talk) 19:51, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I also see that WP:CS mentions rp only twice, once in the context I mentioned above, and another in the context of linking to a google books source. There is nothing in this guidance, as far as I can tell, that would suggest it as a general practice for citations. Dtetta (talk) 06:05, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of WP:CITEVAR is that it should be either all short refs or all long refs but not a mixture of both (just like with WP:ENGVAR); see also a comment by Femke here which I interpreted to say that (Femke said: "The long-style is already the default in the article. No need to post on talk to tidy up the single citations that's in a different style."). There is no guidance anywhere that a "good article" needs to use short ref style. Anyway, I guess Femke is telling us we should not worry too much about it. If you don't like the rp syntax then don't use it. I will continue to use it as I like it. People are different. For the carbon accounting article, we can leave things as it is. Of the repeated refs there is Fong 2021 six times, Bhatia four times, Rich and Bhatia three times etc. Doesn't matter, I don't think our readers will really care that much. So I am happy to agree to disagree on this one and move on. EMsmile (talk) 11:36, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely down to personal preference but I personally would prefer to either move the history section towards the end of the article (as I find it less important) or to rename it to something like "Origin", "Development" or "Rationale" (in which case it could stay there, I guess):

• I find "history" is more for something that goes back decades or centuries and does not need to occupy the glory spot of being the first thing a reader finds after the lead. I think the reader should straight away be presented with "what is it" (definition, components), "what is it used for", "what are problems with it" and towards the end "who developed it and when". Compare also with the other climate change articles, most of which don't have such a dedicated history section at the very start of the article (the ones mentioned below might be exceptions to the rule, and could also be changed; we might be better off comparing with WP:GA or WP:FA articles in the climate change grouping; they can be accessed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change#Metrics).
• Noting previous comment by Chidgk1 above who said "Perhaps moving history section to bottom would also help." And comment by Dtetta who said Regarding the suggestion that the History section be moved to the bottom or the article. My main concern with this is that this particular article is not a broad based scientific article like Climate change. A History section at (or near) the start of this article helps explain how these techniques got to be the way they are, and that seems important. If you look at the Verified Carbon Standard or Gold Standard (carbon offset standard) articles, you’ll see they also start with a brief history discussion. Fracking, an unrelated article that is also about a method/technique, also has history near the top of the article. That’s why I think history should be higher up in the outline, rather than at the bottom, like it is for an article like Climate change. But I am open to other suggestions, if folks want to post an idea here on the talk page.

Like I said, it might be down to personal preference. Happy to receive further inputs and thoughts on this. EMsmile (talk) 13:20, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Appreciate your citing my reasons for keeping it at or near the top, which remains my recommendation. Another option would be to reword “History” to focus more clearly on just those events that are most clearly tied to how the current standards and frameworks come to be the way they are. Dtetta (talk) 16:11, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

With that, do you mean changing the section title from "History" to something else? That would also be my recommendation. But not sure if I understood you correctly? EMsmile (talk) 16:14, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would support some of the other wording options you’ve suggested. Again, in analogous situations “History” is used, but I’m fine with considering other word choices, such as “Origin” or “Development”. Dtetta (talk) 16:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And I see I wasn’t clear in my earlier comment - I meant that one option to resolve this issue would be to edit the contents of the history section to make the connection between events since 1995 and the current features of the present standards more apparent, and perhaps edit out some tangential information. Dtetta (talk) 06:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An example would be to address a concern I believe Chidgk1 mentioned, which would be to highlight the Scope 1, 2 and 3 features of the standards more prominently in the history (or at least earlier in the article). Dtetta (talk) 06:20, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Chidgk1 and EMsmile - Looked at ways of modifying the history section to remove extraneous information and focus it more on the key events that led to current standards. Below is a strikeout/underline presentation of the text revision I would propose. In addition to cutting out some of the text, I included a brief description of Scopes 1, 2, and 3. This revision covers the first three paragraphs.

Nothing jumped out at me in the fourth paragraph merited taking out, but I think the last paragraph (about the growth to the present of GHG accounting and reporting)  could be moved into the “Future trends” section, with that section then retitled “Recent trends” perhaps. Let me know if you think this addresses your concerns, if you think other text could be removed to still focus it more, or if you would still rather see this section placed further down in the article. Thanks. Reference numbers are the same as what’s in the current article.

- - - -

HistoryOrigins Initial efforts to create greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting methods were done largely at the national level. In 1995 the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) required Annex 1 (generally developed) countries to report annually on their emissions for six industrial categories. That same year the FCCC piloted a program where countries could experiment with carbon offset projects. In 1997 the Kyoto protocol created a carbon offset program called the Clean Development Mechanism, and alsodefined the greenhouse gases that are the central focus of greenhouse gas accounting methods: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, nitrogen trifluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. These actions raised awareness about the importance of accurate GHG emission estimates and the need for measuring the amount of GHG reductions from offset projects.[4][5]

In 1998 the “Safe Climate Sound Business: An Action Agenda” challenged businesses to measure, track and openly report greenhouse gas emissions from their operations. That year the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) initiated a multi stakeholder process to develop a protocol to support this goal. The first edition of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol was published in September 2001, and included over 200 organizations in its development.[6] It establishes a comprehensive, global, standardized framework for measuring and managing emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains, products, cities, and policies.[7] The protocol divides an organization’s emissions into three different categories. Scope 1 emissions include direct emissions from facilities. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from electricity use, and Scope 3 covers other indirect emissions. [45]p25

Other initiatives since that time NGOs have also played a role in driving corporate and community participation in GHG accounting. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) was founded in the UK in 2002, and started with 35 investors signing a request for environmental information, and  245 companies responding. It is now a multinational organization with thousands of organizations companies disclosing their GHG emissions, along with other data.[8] The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) was formed in 2015 as a collaboration between CDP, WRI, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). Its with the goal is to establish science-based environmental target setting as a standard corporate practice. It has continued the trend of incorporating GHG accounting protocols into broader efforts to reduce emissions. [9]

- - - -

If you do still want it further down, IMO we would need to rethink the intro - starting with GHG accounting Drivers seems abrupt to me, but you all might see it differently. Dtetta (talk) 14:54, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your new text is better than before I think Chidgk1 (talk) 15:49, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with Chidgk1 and would say just go ahead and implement those. What still confuses me a little bit is this sentence: "were done largely at the national level", perhaps you could clarify the wording - I guess it's supposed to mean taking all the businesses in the entire country? Later it talks about "community participation" - you could maybe give some examples for that. Are you referring to efforts by NGOs to make organisations more accountable? EMsmile (talk) 09:55, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the term “national level”, the second sentence I think pretty much explains that term. Can’t think of a better way of phrasing it, but if you have a better phrasing for that clause, feel free to make that edit once I post this text. Regarding the use of the word “communities”, I think that’s a good observation. However, both the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories, as well as the ICLEI Community protocol, use the term community. Have spent some time thinking about it, and I agree with you that it’s a somewhat vague term, but that is the language that those protocols are using, so I’m being true to that and using that word in this section as well as in the main text of the article. In the heading for this part of the article I use the term cities/communities. So I could change to that in the lead as well, I guess, but that would not be my first choice. What these protocols are referring to is sub national (in particular sub state) governments like cities and counties in the US. Once you get to the state level and above, the approach is typically more of a top down one, as is done with national inventories. As I understand it, the terms local governments, cities, and communities are used interchangeably in this context. Dtetta (talk) 15:52, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have not heard back from WRI regarding their image. I also found an image for the top of the article (that does a good job of focusing on Scopes 1, 2, and 3) at:https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2020-04-22-uct-carbon-footprint-report-2018

At the bottom of the page it states:"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License." I am having trouble figuring out if this is an acceptable Creative Commons license for uploading based on the criteria at:Wikipedia:File copyright tags. Chidgk1, Crisantom or EMsmile - can either of you provide some insight here? Dtetta (talk) 17:46, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are you squatting this article? You seem to have assumed directorial powers based on your work life rather than experience as a wiki editor. 98.4.112.204 (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I find the subject extremely dry so am happy Dtetta is improving the article. I would welcome your opinion at “Requested move 3 January 2023” above and feel free to edit the article. I expect being less familiar with the article you will be able to improve readability or tag sentences which need clarifying for the general reader. If you have any disagreement with @Dtetta you can ping me or anyone else for a 3rd opinion. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:22, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@98.4.112.204: Your comment here seems completely misplaced and disruptive. Please be kinder to other editors. EMsmile (talk) 11:47, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Chidgk1 and EMsmile for that support. This has been a heater lift than I thought it would be! Dtetta (talk) 15:04, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry no idea. There is a copyright helpdesk somewhere on Wikimedia or Wikipedia. I forget where but they seem knowledgable and quick to answer Chidgk1 (talk) 06:13, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A licence with ND is unfortunately not compatible, see here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing EMsmile (talk) 11:46, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks EMsmile for that info, guess I will have to work with the folks at UCT to go through the licensing template that WP provides, if they are willing. Dtetta (talk) 15:04, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am just putting this here as part of a quarry of ideas which could perhaps be addressed at some point in the future (it's certainly not urgent at this point). It might be useful to include an examples section to make this whole concept more tangible:

• One example could be water and sanitation: I thought of that while working on the WASH article, where I was adding info on GHG emissions and how they are grouped into the three scopes. I came across a good publication by IWA from 2022 which explains a bit on how carbon accounting is used in the WASH sector. The publication is here.
• The other example could be biomass/bioenergy. We had a quick discussion about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Biomass#Too_much_detail_on_carbon_accounting_aspects? You (Dtetta) wrote there "I will also look for ways to mention biomass accounting methods within the Project accounting subsection of the Carbon accounting article" which I think could be useful. But maybe in a dedicated examples section, rather than inside of the Project accounting subsection. EMsmile (talk) 13:08, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A very minor little question: We have now a section heading called "Other uses". I guess that means that the section called "Frameworks and standards" is the "main uses" of carbon accounting? Does that come across clearly for a layperson reader? Or is "other uses" perhaps not quite ideal? It's a very minor point but it's confusing me a little bit at this point. EMsmile (talk) 13:14, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder why the German Wikipedia has two separate articles: one on de:carbon accounting (= parent article) and one on de:GHG_Protocol (= sub-article), whereas in the English Wikipedia we treat them both in just one article. Do you see any benefit in splitting of GHG protocol into its own article or is it better to keep it all in one? I think it seems to work to keep them together in one, and the article is not too long, but I am just wondering if there could be any benefits in splitting it off. EMsmile (talk) 13:37, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do think there should be a separate article for GHG protocol. I’ve mentioned that, and I’m planning on doing that, as part of the SDG 13/SEI project. But I don’t think this article should be adjusted based on having a separate article on GHG protocol. Just like there are separate main articles for ISO 14064, VERRA, and Gold standard, there can be a separate GHG protocol article that serves as the main article for the GHG protocol portion of this article. The references to GHG protocol here are an important way of highlighting the prominence of that protocol in GHG accounting. Dtetta (talk) 15:16, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Has the "external links" list already been re-checked in the recent update? I would be inclined to cull it a bit, as fewer external links would be better (and ensuring they are not biased to one particular region, given that this is a global topic). But not sure if someone has already looked at this section and made a very careful choice of links? EMsmile (talk) 22:48, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have that as a to-do. Dtetta (talk) 19:20, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to remove the one I added if you have better - I was just trying to liven it up a bit Chidgk1 (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think of this image instead: Bioenergy system boundaries for carbon accounting (I've added it to the bioenergy article, too)?. Overall, I think it would be good if this article had say 8-10 images which would roughly mean one image per visible page of scrolling. Might be hard to find so many though. EMsmile (talk) 09:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll leave @Dtetta to comment on that image. But in general I think 3 or 4 good ones would be better than a lot which are not very relevant Chidgk1 (talk) 09:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For comparison, I am putting here the only other image that is currently in the article:

@Chidgk1 if you think it's better than the one that I am proposing, could you please make it clearer in the figure caption how this relates to carbon accounting? I don't find it clear. - And I agree that images that are not very relevant are not worth having. But I would have thought that collectively we should be able to find more than 3-4 images on the world wide web that are relevant to illustrate the concept of carbon accounting. EMsmile (talk) 09:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Dtetta and User:Chidgk1 as I feel this discussion hasn't quite reached a conclusion yet? My proposal is to either replace the current image (Sentinel_5P_model) with the image "Bioenergy system boundaries.jpg", or to keep the current image but give it a clearer caption and then add the bioenergy image in addition. In addition to these 1-2 images, the search should continue for another 3-4 images (ideally). It would be nice if the article had at least say 4-5 images in total (I think now that my initial estimate of 8-10 images was overly ambitious and too time consuming to do). EMsmile (talk) 23:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would like the satellite pic to stay in but have no objection to you or anyone adding more or changing the caption Chidgk1 (talk) 11:51, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment the caption just says "Sentinel 5P helps detect methane leaks". Could you (or someone else) please add another sentence to explain (to the lay person) what this has to do with carbon accounting? I think the link could be made quite easily but it's probably clearer in your head than in mine. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 13:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Expanded caption - if still unclear please let me know Chidgk1 (talk) 16:48, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK good. I have also added the bioenergy image now. Looking forward to seeing several more images being added as time goes on. EMsmile (talk) 10:40, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I read that when ChatGPT was asked to write a Wikipedia article half of it was untrue. Presumably it cannot do citations.

But if we already have an article which is well cited I wonder if there is an automated way to make it more readable? If not which tool do you recommend to measure readability? Chidgk1 (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've also experimented with Chapt GPT for this task (readability improvements) a little bit already. It's not there yet, but it will come! Maybe in a year or two we'll say to Chat GPT: "improve the readability of Text X" and it will do it for us. So far my experience is that is strayed too far from the original. Further conversations about Chat GPT for Wikipedia editing are here or in the Facebook group Wikipedia Weekly.

In the meantime, this is how I work on readability and the free online tools I use: I use Web-FX to tell me the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease score. Then I try to make improvements. The free websites Quillbot and Hemmingway App are useful (links to those are in the link lust below). Then afterwards I recheck with Web-FX what the new Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease score is. I've written about it on the talk page of the project that a lot of my work falls under. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Meetup/SDGs/Communication_of_environment_SDGs#Working_on_readability_aspects .

I feel strongly about readability improvements being a necessity, and a welcome improvement, to many Wikipedia articles. The more of us keep this in mind at all times and help with that, the better. It's not easy to do for the more theoretical articles like this one or like sustainability (readability work in progress) or water security (I have that one on my to-do list as well). EMsmile (talk) 12:45, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have spent probably 3 hours on so on readability improvements for the article so far, mainly for the lead. Plan to spend another 2-3 hours on the rest of the article. I most often use Readable, which I purchased a subscription to when I initiated this effort to improve readability for the lead section of the Climate change article back in September 2021. Hemmingway and Quilbot are also good tools. At this point all the tools, including ChatGPT, seem to still require a good bit of thought when using them. Which to me is a good thing!

I had recommended ChatGPT for the SDG13 project team back in early December, and used it to help construct the lead for this article. Asked it a few different questions to create different segments of text. IMO it was very helpful, although I did have to make some modifications to the text it created. And it does not yet provide citations:) I found I had to modify the text segments it created for readability, extraneous (not necessarily incorrect) information, and other changes to better connect the lead to the article content. But I did not find any of the text responses it gave me to be untrue. It’s a good tool, IMO, but just a tool. Dtetta (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The new image for the lead seems pretty good to me. I've just improved caption but not sure if I got it right, please check. The caption needs to be clear for lay persons. Note that the lead does not explain the Scope 1, 2, 3 but just says something about Scope 3. If the scopes are important, can they be explained better in the lead and introduced better in the main text? Since the lead image now includes mention of Scopes 1, 2, 3 I assume these are quite central for carbon accounting (?), or are they just one example of many? It would be good if this could come out clearly in the caption and in the lead. EMsmile (talk) 08:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

EMsmile -agree - the lead should describe scopes 1, 2 and 3 - thanks for pointing that out! Will also work on the scope description in the main text. I think you caption is also an improvement-made a couple of minor spelling edits to it. Dtetta (talk) 13:57, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Two suggestions:

• Regarding the section "effectiveness and limitations": I find that not so clear. I would spilt it into two separate level 1 headings. The first could be called "benefits" or "strengths" or "advantages". I think that's easier to understand than "effectiveness". The second level 1 heading could then be "disadvantages " or "critique" or "problems" or "challenges" or "conceptual problems". I would find that clearer than "limitations". In any case they don't belong together in the one level 1 heading, in my opinion.
• I also think that the section on "limitations" could do with a sub structure to make it easier to read, so some level 2 headings after "limitations" becomes a level 1 heading. EMsmile (talk) 09:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I divided the Effectiveness and Limitations section in two per your suggestion. Your suggested title changes don't seem like an improvement to me, but I don't see any real problems with those choices, either. In terms of substructures for the limitations section, I would prefer to see your concern addressed by changes to the text, perhaps with transitional/introductory sentences to help make connections for the reader. It's not a long section as is, and I think sub headings would create an overwhelming hierarchical structure for this section. I can work on text changes to help make the sub concepts within limitations more clear. Dtetta (talk) 15:03, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that splitting. I find "limitations" a bit of a euphemism for "problems"... But perhaps it's justified for carbon accounting but I see you've also proposed it for the carbon offset article where I think "limitations" might be too mild. But we can discuss that further there.

Regarding Level-2 sub-headings for the limitations section, I guess it all depends on whether the limitations can be grouped in a logical way and whether that section might still grow in future. For comparison purposes see here the section about Challenges in the SDG article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals#Challenges Even though each sub-section is quite small, it helps the reader to quickly orientate themselves as to which types of challenges there are. Perhaps this is not so relevant for the carbon accounting article (as there might not be so many different types of limitations) but for the carbon offset article it could be useful to provide such a grouping of the challenges/problem areas. EMsmile (talk) 21:40, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I can see a valid case for organizing it with subsections as you suggest. One concern is that the subsection titles can become somewhat cryptic. But I agree it’s worth considering when revising that section. There are clearly distinct concepts in it, and it’s not much different in length than the “Other applications” section, which does include subsections. Dtetta (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly enough, the manual of style seems to be largely silent on this issue. You might consider posting a comment there, and see if it gets any traction Dtetta (talk) 22:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At this point my future efforts will be mostly focused on responding to any comments that come up during the GA review. However, there are a few items that, IMO, could benefit from additional editing now:

• Provide additional citations for lead text, make discussion of GHG protocol more prominent.
• Include graphic depiction of accounting process showing the steps in like in this NZ guidance or ICI report?
• include a graphic on consumption based emissions for "Community protocols" subsection
• Clarify distinction between Net Zero discussion in "Other applications" section and Net Zero discussion in "Current trends" section
• In Current Trends - Briefly discuss carbon credit rating agencies, as distinct from auditors who verify credits (Carbon Credits 2022)

Dtetta (talk) 19:11, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

GA toolbox
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This review is transcluded from Talk:Carbon accounting/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 13:02, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Per Earwig, the phrase comprehensive, global, standardized framework for measuring and managing emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains, products, cities and policies is taken directly from here. I can see this is almost impossible to rephrase to meet WP:PARAPHRASE, so I would recommend putting it in quotes.
  • Done.
• File:Bioenergy system boundaries.jpg has a CC 4.0 licence, but there's no indication on the source page that the image has that licence, unless I'm missing something.
  • EMsmile - I believe you inserted this image - any thoughts on this particular issue? Might be best to just delete this graphic from the article.

    I've checked and the image comes from this paper which is clearly marked as CC BY (at the top of the page). So as far as I can see the image has the same licence as the paper and is therefore compatibly licenced. I think it's a useful image to have, particularly given that this article is so low on images. EMsmile (talk) 07:18, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    That works; thanks -- I hadn't spotted that link. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:51, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• File:Sentinel 5P model.jpg says "own work" of the uploader, but that seems to be incorrect as they also say they have cut out the image from its background.
  • Chidgk1 - would you be willing to look into this?

SkywalkerPL - We are currently using an image you uploaded as part of the Carbon accounting article. It’s unclear whether this is an image you created, or whether it’s cut out from another source and put on a white background. It looks like you released it with a CC 3.0 license. Can you help clafity this for us?

• File:Carbon Accounting Scopes.png: as with the others, the source page doesn't seem to give the claimed licence.
  • I'm confused by this comment- when I look at the source page, the caption for this image states: “(CC BY 4.0, Modified from World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol)”. WRI’s licensing page also states that their images are CC , with a link to the CC BY 4.0 page. Is that not sufficient?

    I'll strike this (I hadn't found the WRI page) but there's one part of this that I have to take on faith, which is that the image really does come from the WRI -- searching wri.org for images related to scopes doesn't find it, for example. I think this is good enough for GA but ideally we'd add the WRI URL for this image on wri.org to the image file. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have located the WRI image before, so will double check my notes and add the appropriate WRI URL to the image file. Dtetta (talk) 14:24, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done.Dtetta (talk) 15:22, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• FN 95, Treepoints, is a blog -- blogs are usually not reliable sources, but in this case is the author a subject matter expert?
  • I don’t think this author would be considered a subject matter expert. I think the other citation at the end of this sentence provides adequate support for the text, so I deleted the Treepoints citation.
• MOS:LEAD recommends no more than four paragraphs in the lead. This is not an absolute requirement, but I think it would be good here to combine the second and third paragraphs, which have similar topics.
  • Done.
• FYI, there's no requirement for citations in the lead except for direct quotes and controversial topics. It's harmless to leave those citations in (and certainly not a problem for this GA review) but I wanted to make sure you knew it was unnecessary. This is because everything in the lead should be in the body as well, and cited in the body already.
  • I was advised by another editor that the lead should include citations, but will look at removing those.

    At User:Dtetta: no please don't remove the citations from the lead. They are very important for when leads are transcribed with the excerpt tool. I actually think the WP:MOS should be updated to say that citations in leads are a good thing to have. See also on my talk page where I have discussed this with User:Mike Christie further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:EMsmile#LST? EMsmile (talk) 07:14, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm striking this point; this was just FYI and EMsmile gives a good reason for keeping them in this case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "They published the first version of Greenhouse Gas Protocol": should this be "They published the first version of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol"? I see you use it elsewhere in the article without "the" in front.
  • David Rich, with WRI, was one of the subject matter experts I consulted when developing the current version of the article. He suggested that convention for referencing Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

    OK. I see a couple of the sources use "the Greenhouse Gas Protocol", but the article itself is consistent so struck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:06, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Both the US[26] and the UK[27] governments have recently issued executive type orders that require this practice." Assuming these two footnotes cover the US and UK respectively, I would suggest moving both to the end of the sentence, to make it clear they cite the whole sentence. I'd also suggest removing "recently"; it's not that important, and would require an "as of" statement to avoid it becoming dated.
  • Done.
• "The CDM has a detailed set of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification procedures": does this need to be upper case like this?
  • It’s a specific term of art in this field. My memory is the web sites I have reviewed all use capitalization for that term.

    OK. I see that elsewhere in the article you use the same phrase without capitalization; can I just check that that should not be capitalized too? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Understand - I will double check on this capitalization issue and ensure that it is used consistently in the article, and post a notice hear when I believe it’s done.Dtetta (talk) 13:57, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    My memory of this was incorrect. Converted text to lower case.Dtetta (talk) 14:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Similar procedures to document project reductions under Article 6 of the Paris agreement are yet to be worked out": needs an "as of" qualification.
  • Done - used “As of 2023” as a qualifier.

    I think that has to be "As of 2022", unless you have a later source; your source for this is dated 2022. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:09, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Done.Dtetta (talk) 14:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• You have "cap-and-trade" and "cap and trade"; I would be consistent. And I'd suggest linking it to emissions trading; you've already linked to that article earlier but I think it's worth repeating the link for those unfamiliar with the term.
  • Done - went with the convention on the California Cap-and-Trade webpage

    Well, the website is actually "California Cap and Trade", though I see they do use "cap-and-trade" in running text, so it's inconsistent. This is a minor point, and I'm fine if you want to leave it as is, but do you think there is a standard usage or are both forms -- hyphenated and not hyphenated -- seen in the literature? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:13, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Did a brief search on the term, and it appears that both hyphenated and non-hyphenated approaches are used. Dtetta (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "have incorporated principles from the 2006 IPCC guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories": IPCC should be at least linked, and perhaps explained.
  • Done - Spelled out IPCC and created link
• "GHG Protocol refers to a group of standards that are the most common in GHG accounting." I'm not clear what this is saying. You say GHG Protocol refers to a group of standards; is this just saying that GHG Protocol *is* a group of standards?
  • Yes - I think it makes sense to characterize it that way. Edited text accordingly.
• In the subsection on TCFD I would start by explaining what TCFD is.
  • Done.
• "It recommends a source and activity framework rather than a scope based framework to calculate emissions." What is a "source and activity framework"?
  • Clarified this text - please let me know if you think it’s understandable.
• "The guidance covers five basic emissions generating." Looks like an incompletely edited sentence?
  • Yes it was - it’s been corrected.
• "These include GHG activities and sources over which a local government has significant influence GHG activities of community interest": I think this is missing a semicolon after "influence".
  • Done
• "The programs themselves cover GHG accounting rules as other requirements. Accounting rules cover areas such as monitoring, reporting, and verification. Program requirements can cover project eligibility, certification, and other aspects" I don't understand this. The previous sentence mentions compliance programs; is that what this is referring to? And what does it mean to say "cover GHG accounting rules"? And what's the connection of the third sentence to the previous two?
  • Revised the paragraph to address your comments - let me know if you think this new wording is clearer.

    Yes, that's much clearer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:14, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Additionality and uncertainty are not specifically required by the protocol": how could uncertainty be required by a protocol?
  • Uncertainty in this context is referring to guidance on how uncertainty in GHG emission estimates for a given activity are characterized in reports. Protocols vary in the extent to which they require the uncertainty of emission estimates to be characterized.

    I think this could be clearer. How about inverting the sentence so we start with the general point, like so: "The protocol gives general guidance on applying the concepts of additionality and uncertainty, but provides no specific requirements for them"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:17, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Revised the text along the lines you suggested.Dtetta (talk) 18:52, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "GHG Protocol Policy and Action Standard has similar accounting principles, but applies to general programs and policies designed to reduce GHGs": should be "but these are applied to" if I understand the intended meaning.
  • Switched the text to the wording you suggest.

    Looks like this edit got lost? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:18, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for catching that - it's done now. Dtetta (talk) 11:52, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "These include relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy, transparency, and conservativeness." This sentence appears in the article three times. I'm not sure we need it at all, since it's related to the underlying accounting principles rather than the frameworks themselves, but if we do have to have it can we avoid the repetition?
  • Revised the case of repetition in the project accounting standards section. The other instance earlier in the article is a slightly different wording, and does not include relevance. It’s based on a different guidance document.
• "using various methods or based on project categories": the first part of this is so vague as to be meaningless; I'd drop it or clarify.
  • Revised the wording to improve clarity - those two approaches are, in fact, distinct.

    This appears to be unchanged? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, thought I had corrected this - it’s now been edited to make the wording more specific. Dtetta (talk) 17:26, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "In addition to the traditional uses described above": is "traditional" the right word? I think it could be cut without harming anything.
  • Done.
• "through the use of eligible renewable energy resources": I think we need to say what "eligible" means here, or at least provide a link.
  • Deleted “eligible”, I think just “renewable energy resources” seems pretty clear. Questions about eligibility are probably not all that relevant in this context.

    Seems this edit got lost too? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for spotting that - that change has been made now. Dtetta (talk) 14:32, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "renewable obligation certificates": is this the same thing as a REC?
  • As I understand it, and tried to describe it in the article, they mean essentially the same thing, but the UK uses different terminology.

    REC is used for the sentences about India and Australia, so is the UK the exception here? Or is REC a US term? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:26, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    The NREL citation for this text describes the use of RECs in Australia and India, in addition to the US. It also states that "renewable obligation certificates" is the terminology used in the UK, and that guarantees of origin are used in the EU. Revised paragraph to reflect this. Dtetta (talk) 12:10, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Companies that purchase RECs can use them to lower average emissions factors in their accounting." I don't follow this, although the definition of eligible above might resolve it. This sounds like a form of emissions trading; is that right? If so the REC must indicate that there was a net reduction in emissions in the megawatt supplied, so presumably what the companies purchase is the offset of emissions? So RECs might differ in the amount they offset, and hence in their value?
  • As I understand it, green energy purchases have two components - one is the purchase of the power itself, the other is the REC, which has its own value in these markets. In places like California, they are used to meet targets that are part of Renewable Portfolio Standards, and can be bought and sold. The Scientific American citation does a good job of describing the process and how companies can use it to make there emissions seem lower. I was trying to summarize the gist of that.

    I read a couple of the relevant sources and I see that some of the vagueness is in the sources themselves -- one says "In practice, a wide range of REC and GO definitions exist". I think a couple of points aren't clear in the current subsection on RECs. The sentence "Companies that purchase RECs can use them to lower average emissions factors in their accounting" seems to apply only to the US, for one thing. Another point is that the definition of GO & REC varies; that should be clearer. And I think the point made in the Scientific American article, that the use of a REC does not imply additional renewable power has been brought to the grid, since it could have been generated anyway, needs to be brought out in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Good point - revised text to include that specific issue. Dtetta (talk) 12:18, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I've struck the point you clarified; any thoughts on the other parts of my comment? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    It's clear that Gillenwater (although he is a leading authority on carbon accounting and carbon offsets) is not a fan of RECs of GOs. Although his opinion is that the definitions are vague, I'm not sure going into detail on that is very helpful in the context of this article. He does talk about RECs and GOs being used in both the US and Europe (page 6), so I don't think the tactic of using these instruments to report lower Scope 2 emissions is not limited to the US. Thought about ways the text might be further revised, but in the end I think the current version is still an appropriate and accurate characterization of the issue. Dtetta (talk) 18:03, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Data from facility level accounting can improve the overall quality and accuracy of national inventories by providing validation for inventory estimates": what does "inventory estimates" refer to? The GHG accounting for the fixed elements of the plant?
  • One example is, for the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program, EPA use reporting from specific plants, like you describe, to create inventory estimates for industrial sectors that are used to support the overall US GHG inventory estimate that is reported to the UNFCCC. Facility data can be used to provide a quality assurance check on some of these numbers. The WRI citation describes this starting on p.8. Admittedly, I am trying to summarize a lot of detail in a short sentence. But does that make sense? I modified the sentence, and hopefully its a little more understandable.

    On rereading I think this is OK. "Emission inventory" is a term of art here, and I think it would be inappropriate to define it within this article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:55, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Some of these stories have been called misleading." This is a vague way to refer to the underlying story. I'm not sure this is worth including, unless there are sources we could use to create a section about media coverage of carbon accounting.
  • So the main message is that large numbers of companies now report their data to organizations like CDP. CDP issues reports like the carbon majors report, which new media then uses to create headlines like: “The biggest 10 GHG emitters are responsible for most of the world’s GHGs” The Snopes citation points out how this can be a flawed process that creates misperceptions, and uses one specific instance to illustrate this. I think all these aspects are important, and revised the text slightly to make this clearer.

    Fair enough, but I don't think the text as it stands does make this clear. For one thing "have been called" implies that it's just an opinion that they were misleading -- Snopes is a reliable source, and we can say "were misleading" or even "incorrect" if Snopes supports that. A bigger issue is that this is a generality, but the supporting source only talks about one particular misleading factoid. We don't have a source that says "the rankings lead to multiple misleading news stories". I think if this particular misleading story is worth mentioning, we should give the details as concisely as we can. However, as I say above, if we're going to stray from facts about carbon accounting into media coverage of carbon accounting we have to make sure we cover the whole topic, not just this one story, and that would require more sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:00, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Understand your point - will work on revising this paragraph to provide a more detailed description with additional sources. Probably will take a few days to complete. Dtetta (talk) 12:50, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Decided to work on it today. Added some additional sources and clarified that the Snopes article referred to the coverage of the 2017 CDP carbon majors report. Did not go so far as to actually say it “was misleading”, as I was not able to find any web pages where the Guardian or Wired defended their stories. The Snopes report was well documented, so if you feel strongly about it, I’m fine going with that “was misleading” language. Dtetta (talk) 19:07, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I think what you have now works -- "shown to be misleading" seems accurate to me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:30, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• "Understanding the overall impacts of GHG reporting in contributing towards climate change goals can be difficult." I'm not clear on what this means; can you clarify?
  • Revised to clarify that is is more related to the effect on reducing an organizations emissions.
• Is it "EU ETS" or "EU-ETS"?
  • This EU page describes it as EU ETS without the hyphen, so I edited the article to reflect that usage.
• "These include whether or not the studies are done in places where there are also some sort of a price on carbon, such as the EU-ETS." Needs rephrasing; "where there are also some sort of a" is ungrammatical and I'm not clear what's intended -- maybe "where carbon can be traded"? Or "where there is a cost to emissions"?
  • Changed “are” to “is”, and went with “emissions trading”.
• "Even Scope 3 emissions data from commercial data providers tend to be highly inconsistent." What does "commercial data providers" refer to? Industry entities whose business is to obtain and report this data? If they are not the source, but only the middle men, I don't see why their data should be consistent.
  • The point of the paragraph is that Scope 3 data have reliability/accuracy issues. As you state, (and the citation mentions) there are firms that collect this data, do a variety of auditing checks on the information, and then sell the reports to organizations like investment firms. The purpose of the last sentence is just as a final example of unreliability/poor accuracy in the data (even companies that are acting like third party auditors don’t produce consistent information), in addition to the other examples cited in the paragraph.

    The fact that these firms are supposed to be auditing the data seems to me to be an important part of this point that's not directly stated in the argument. Auditing should make the data accurate, and therefore consistent across data providers. Without mentioning that these firms evaluate and vouch for the data, the article gives the reader no reason to expect consistency because we don't say what these data providers are supposed to be doing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:08, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Good point - edited paragraph to address this comment. Dtetta (talk) 13:09, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• There are uncited sentences in the "Standards alignment and interoperability" subsection -- the first paragraph, and the last sentence of the second paragraph.
  • In the first paragraph, the first sentence is just a reflection of all of the various standards that have been cited in the article. The second sentence reflects an earlier statement in the “Origins” section that GHG protocol was established in 2001. The last sentence is just an intro to the sentences in the next paragraph, which do have citations. In the last sentence of the second paragraph I was paraphrasing the “Final thoughts” section of the Harvard citation at the end of the previous sentence. I moved that to the end of the paragraph.

    I don't think you need to repeat every single citation that covers anything this paragraph could be seen as referring to, but some citation is needed -- it's common for an article to be edited later by others who may move the paragraph or change its wording, and without a citation it's too easy for the meaning to drift away from where it started. The paragraph is a general statement and I would think a summary article in one of the sources could probably cover it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:13, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. Made some additional edits, including a citation for the second sentence, and a relocation of the Latham & Watkins citation to the end of the paragraph. Hope that addresses your comment. Dtetta (talk) 11:46, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I think we need to clarify what is meant by materiality means here; I know more or less what it means in an accounting context, but I'm not clear that that's what's meant here, and even if it is it's an unfamiliar term to many readers and a link or some clarification would be helpful.
  • Revised the paragraph where these terms are used to make the concepts clearer.
• "More recently, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) standard incorporates guidance from voluntary carbon market standards. It has approved seven such standards as eligible for use by airlines under that regulatory scheme." The second sentence is unclear; I would have thought "it" refers to CORSIA, but then what does "that regulatory scheme" refer to?
  • CORSIA is a program run by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The “regulatory scheme” is the program that has been developed by ICAO and called “CORSIA”. Revised the text to hopefully clarify this.
• "ISO also has a new standard under development, ISO 14068, that supports net-zero goals. That standard is currently in the preparation stage." The second sentence appears to just repeat the first; can we cut it?
  • Done.
• "It is expected to build on the original net neutrality standard, PAS 2060." Shouldn't PAS 2060 have been mentioned earlier? Is there a suitable link?
  • Good catch! Add a section and citation on PAS 2060.
• A general question: Scope 3 seems like it would automatically double count some emissions, since the vendors in my supply chain emit GHG from facilities that they themselves must measure at the corporate or facility level. Am I misreading this? If not, how is this taken into account when setting targets and reporting? If I and my vendors cooperate on emissions reduction planning, how do we allocate emissions measurements between us if I have to use Scope 3?
  • Good point:) That issue should come out more clearly in the limitations section. WIll work on that and post here when I have addressed it.

    In terms of setting targets and reporting, I think companies realize there is double counting here. But that’s the case throughout these standards. All electricity emissions are Scope 1 for the utilities, but Scope 2 for the companies that use the electricity. I do talk about the double counting issue in general in a later paragraph in this section. Despite double counting, Scope 3 analyses and reporting still help companies work with their supply chains to reduce emissions. Edited the paragraph to address the issue you raise. Let me know if ?? Dtetta (talk) 19:46, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I think there's enough about double counting now; more details on how the issues are addressed might be interesting, but the article is quite long already and we're approaching the point where more detail might require an article split per summary style. I think this is fine as is. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:35, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's it for a first pass. I'll read through again and do spotchecks once these points are addressed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:Mike Christie, thanks for doing this review, much appreciated! I am not planning to be involved in depth but just wanted to make a comment about your comment regarding having sources in the lead. I think it's better to have sources also in the lead nowadays because there is now the tool of excerpts which transcribes the lead to other articles. Therefore, it's very handy if the lead does have citations in it. See for example the lead of climate change which is transcribed to some other articles, see here. EMsmile (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dtetta, are you planning to work on this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:46, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Christie - thanks so much for that review! Apologies for not responding sooner - for some reason I don’t recall getting a notification for your review post, and was intending to give you a week for your review and then check back. I will look through these comment and provide a short response to each, and then work on incorporating them as edits where appropriate. Appreciate your time on this. Dtetta (talk) 16:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No hurry -- as long as I know you're planning to work on it that's fine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:39, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Great comments Mike Christie:) Provided italicized responses to each of your bullet points. Addressed nearly all of them - either via edits, a response on the talk page, or both. The bullets that still need to be addressed are the Bioenergy and Sentinel 5P graphics, which I have asked EMsmile and Chidgk1 to help with a response on, and your last comment about Scope 3 emissions. Let me know if you think I have overlooked anything in this response. Dtetta (talk) 04:20, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, I didn't get the ping that you, Dtetta, added for me when you wrote "EMsmile - I believe you inserted this image - any thoughts on this particular issue? Might be best to just delete this graphic from the article.". Don't understand why not. I just saw this because I have this page on my watchlist. I will look into this image now. EMsmile (talk)

Dtetta, I'm going through your replies now and I noticed one grammatical point I want to highlight: you often use a colon to introduce a list where the words before the colon do not form a full sentence. See this page for a more detailed explanation. For example, you have "These are: use of electricity by the community; use of fuel ..."; this should be "These are use of electricity ...". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that writing tip and website (as well as the Earwig site, which I wasn’t aware of). Will look through the article and correct those instances where a colon is used inappropriately, and then post a brief notice in italics below this post when I believe I have completed that. Dtetta (talk) 13:45, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected that instance - also did a page search for ":" and did not see any other instances where I wrote the text. The others all seemed to be in citations or in Main article/See also type listings. Dtetta (talk) 15:10, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed a few when I read through the article a week ago; I think you're right that they're all fixed now. Sorry, out of time for today; will return to this probably tomorrow. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:22, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see that now - thanks for doing that:) Dtetta (talk) 12:34, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All points above are struck except one image question; I would suggest removing that image if you can't resolve the question there, and readding it when that's settled. I will do some spotchecks next, either later today or perhaps tomorrow. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mike Christie - really appreciate the time you took to provide such thoughtful and skilled copy editing to the article. It’s definitely more accurate and understandable as a result. Will look for a suitable replacement for the Sentinel 5P image. Dtetta (talk) 15:37, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Spotchecks -- footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FN 23 cites "In the US the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) requires facility (as opposed to corporate) based reporting of GHG emissions from large industrial facilities. The program covers a total of 41 industrial categories." Verified.
• FN 50 cites "At least one third of global GHG emissions are Scope 2." The link is dead so I can't verify this; can you update the link?

  Verified now the link is fixed, but per the endnote for that chapter this is for 2010 data, so I would add an "As of 2010" to this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, done. Dtetta (talk) 13:32, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• FN 71 cites "GHG reports from cities have been found to vary widely, and often show lower emissions than those from independent analyses." Verified.
• FN 98 cites "Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) or Guarantees of Origin (GO) document the fact that one megawatt-hour of electricity is generated and supplied to the electrical grid through the use of renewable energy resources." Verified.

Just the one dead link to address. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:16, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected that dead link. Dtetta (talk) 02:28, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A tweak needed to the FN 50 citation. Other than that it's just the image, so if you remove the image for now I'll be able to promote this to GA, and you can re-add the image when you resolve the issue. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Added that “As of” qualifier to FN 50, and removed the Sentinel 5P image. If I don’t hear back from Chidgk1 or Skywalker PL, there are some generic images of satellites observing earth in the wikimedia catalogue, and will probably go with one of them to illustrate the text in that section. Thanks again for all your work on this! BTW, I will be having arthroscopic knee surgery tomorrow, so will probably be be out of communication on Tuesday and Wednesday. Dtetta (talk) 15:44, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hope the surgery goes well! I'm going to go ahead and pass this; congratulations. An interesting and important topic; it's nice to have this at GA level. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mike Christie. Uploaded a replacement satellite image. And thanks to Chidgk1 for all his work in getting this article to the GA level, as well as to EMsmile for her contributions. Dtetta (talk) 11:24, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that Onegreatjoke! Dtetta (talk) 00:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

JzG - I reverted your deletion of the paragraph on voluntary and regulatory program convergence. The reason for this as for a reversion of a similar deletion edit you made to the Carbon offsets and credit article. See this talk page discussion. Like with that situation, the statements in this paragraph are from a reliable source and are consistent with WP:RS policy. These are not statements that represent scientific assessments, but merely describe programs. So I do not believe the peer review standard is relevant in this situation Dtetta (talk) 21:44, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Except that EWG are not a reliable source. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:00, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You mean EDF, correct? That is the source that is cited for that paragraph. Dtetta (talk) 17:06, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]