Setting standards for measuring and reporting corporate progress in cutting carbon emissions has long been a struggle. Many companies have said their efforts were not fully recognized or consistently measured, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A newly formed coalition called the Task Force for Corporate Action Transparency, or TCAT, is seeking to change that. The group—made up of greenhouse gas accounting experts, practitioners and nonprofit organizations—has released two new reporting frameworks designed to improve how companies document their decarbonization efforts.
The frameworks, known as the Mitigation Action Accounting and Reporting Guidance (MAARG) and the Target Accounting and Reporting Guidance (TARG), aim to fill gaps in existing greenhouse gas accounting standards. According to TCAT, earlier standards provided a useful starting point for companies beginning their decarbonization work, but lacked detailed guidance on how to capture the full range of climate-related actions businesses now undertake.
In materials released with the announcement, TCAT wrote that “most existing GHG accounting standards do not offer clear or comprehensive guidance for the full range of activities companies are implementing.” This inconsistency, the group said, makes it difficult for one company to understand how another measures its actions—akin to trying to communicate across different languages.
The MAARG framework offers methods and tools to help organizations explain the actions and investments tied to their emissions reduction efforts, including those outside a company’s immediate value chain. These could include initiatives that are not directly reflected in emissions inventories but still influence global emissions. The TARG framework, meanwhile, provides a standardized approach for setting climate targets, tracking progress and reporting results. It is intended to help companies “accurately demonstrate performance and outcomes to stakeholders” across a variety of communication platforms.
As The Wall Street Journal noted, current systems such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the Science-Based Targets initiative allow companies primarily to report numerical data. TCAT’s new frameworks are designed to complement these existing models and align with compliance systems in regions such as Europe and California.
Alexia Kelly, managing director of the carbon policy and markets initiative at the High Tide Foundation, one of TCAT’s founding organizations, told The Journal that the new guidance addresses a significant gap.
“We know that many companies would like to be doing more and are stymied by the lack of clarity and independent third-party assurable guidance related to their actions,” she said. “This guidance is really intended to support that entire ecosystem by providing foundational accounting guidance that fills in that gap in the middle.”
Mark Wishnie, chief sustainability officer at Timberland, echoed that sentiment by noting to The Journal, “the reality is that we’ve outgrown the early guidance that first helped companies embark on their climate journeys."
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