The world’s leading authority on carbon accounting has proposed stricter disclosure rules that are set to make it more challenging for large power users such as Amazon and Meta to hit their climate targets.
The EU, California, and the International Financial Reporting Standards all draw on the voluntary Greenhouse Gas Protocol oversight body in their guidelines on how companies should disclose their carbon footprints.
This week, the Protocol proposed the first update in a decade to how it measures power-sector emissions, in a move that would upend the way many tech, industrial, and utilities groups account for clean energy investments.
Under the existing guidelines, Big Tech players are able to pollute more each year as their artificial intelligence data centers boom, while also claiming they have hit or are progressing towards “100 percent” renewable energy goals.
This effort relies on investing in wind, solar, and hydro power, often through the use of “renewable energy credits” that vary in price and quality.
A data center running through the night in Texas and powered solely by burning gas can, for example, offset its greenhouse gas emissions thanks to certificates issued when solar energy is purchased during the day in California—even though the two states do not typically trade physical electricity.
In future, both types of energy should be produced at roughly the same time and in the same electricity market, the Protocol said on Monday. This would create a “credible link” between companies and the power they invest in, while ensuring reported data on greenhouse gas emissions from power are “accurate, comparable and decision-useful.”