GHG Protocol’s Scope 2 Reform and the Dawn of the 24/7 Energy Order
1. A Decade Later: When Accounting Meets the Energy Revolution
Ten years ago, the world of corporate carbon disclosure was comparatively simple.
The 2015 Scope 2 Guidance of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol introduced two approaches for calculating emissions from purchased electricity: the Location-Based Method (LBM)—using regional grid-average emission factors—and the Market-Based Method (MBM)—which allowed companies to claim renewable electricity through purchasing Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) such as RECs, GOs, or I-RECs.
This framework catalyzed an unprecedented global boom in renewable power procurement.Companies rushed to sign long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), giving rise to a new language of “carbon-neutral electricity” within corporate finance and ESG reporting.
But today’s energy systems are no longer linear.
Renewable generation and consumption are often temporally misaligned. Cross-border grid interconnections make electricity flow beyond national boundaries. A single REC can appear both in an ESG report and in a carbon offset portfolio.
That temporal and spatial mismatch finally pushed corporate carbon accounting to its limits.
On October 20, 2025, the GHG Protocol launched two global public consultations—signaling a paradigm shift in which time becomes the new foundation of corporate climate integrity.
2. The Awakening of Scope 2: From Annual Reporting to Hourly Reality
The reform centers on a deceptively simple idea: time-based accounting.
To claim zero-emission electricity, companies must now satisfy two conditions:
Hourly Matching and Deliverability.
In other words, it will no longer be acceptable to buy generic annual RECs and claim “100% renewable electricity.”
Companies will need to demonstrate that in each hour of consumption, the power they used originated from clean generation that could physically deliver electricity within their regional grid.
This is more than a technical requirement—it is a return to reality.
Electricity is not an abstract credit; it is a real-time flow of electrons. Solar generation peaks at noon, wind accelerates at night, storage is finite. Honest accounting must acknowledge these physical truths.
The reform thus transforms carbon accounting from a static record into a dynamic reflection of the physical energy system—where time, geography, and carbon intensity converge.
3. From “Procurement” to “Dispatch”: The New Corporate Responsibility
The old logic of the market-based method was simple: buy enough renewable certificates, and your annual Scope 2 emissions turn to zero.
That logic served its purpose. It mobilized early investment and created a global renewable market.
But it also detached emissions reporting from reality.
A company could run its operations on coal-fired power at night while holding solar RECs generated at midday—or use electricity in Tokyo while claiming green power from Hokkaido or even Vietnam.
The result? Beautiful reports, negligible impact.
The new framework forces companies to think differently:
What electricity am I buying? At what hour? From what grid?
Once reporting becomes hourly, companies will have to think like grid operators.
Nighttime decarbonization will require storage investments or multi-period PPAs. Corporate carbon accounting will evolve into corporate energy dispatch planning—a profound shift from symbolic purchasing to operational responsibility.
4. The Consequential Turn: Measuring Impact, Not Just Emissions
Alongside the Scope 2 reform, the GHG Protocol has proposed a Power Sector Consequential Accounting Method, creating a new dimension for measuring how corporate actions affect overall grid emissions.
Imagine a company that installs large-scale battery storage, preventing fossil peaker plants from activating during demand spikes.
Those avoided emissions—system-level reductions—now become reportable climate impacts.
A dedicated Avoided Emissions Technical Working Group (AMI TWG) will establish this framework.
In the near future, companies will hold two ledgers:
- An Inventory Account, documenting direct operational emissions; and
- An Impact Account, quantifying how their actions reduce emissions across the broader grid.
Together, they form a double-entry system for next-generation climate disclosure—where performance is measured not only by what a company emits, but by what it enables the world to avoid emitting.
5. Balancing Precision and Practicality
Implementing hourly matching will not be simple.
Only a handful of jurisdictions—such as the U.S., the EU, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Chile—currently operate timestamped renewable registries capable of tracking generation in real time.
To balance ambition and feasibility, the Scope 2 Technical Working Group proposes several measures:
- Standard load-profile estimation when hourly data are unavailable.
- Exemption thresholds for smaller consumers.
- Legacy clauses to protect long-term contracts.
- Phased implementation, beginning around 2027.
These measures are designed to preserve rigor while ensuring inclusiveness.
As Alexander Bassen, chair of the GHG Protocol Standards Board, stated:
“This update is both timely and necessary—our grids are cleaner, more complex, and more interconnected than ever.”
6. From “Greenwashing” to a Truly Green Grid
Another key reform is the Standard Supply Service (SSS) mechanism.
It mandates that any clean electricity produced through public subsidies, feed-in tariffs, or compliance programs must have its environmental attributes distributed evenly among all consumers and cannot be resold as private “green” electricity.
This seemingly technical rule strikes at the heart of double counting and greenwashing.
For years, corporations have declared “100% renewable” electricity even when that power had already been claimed by national emission inventories.
The new SSS clause draws a firm boundary between public reductions and private claims, reinforcing both accounting integrity and market order.
7. The Logic Upgrade: From Data to Decision
This reform is not just an update to a guideline—it is a reinvention of carbon accounting as a decision-making system.
When companies can monitor the hourly carbon intensity of their electricity consumption, accounting data become a management tool.
Procurement decisions, operational scheduling, and even product footprints can align with real-time grid conditions.
This transparency bridges corporate action and policy goals.
New disclosure regimes—from IFRS S2 and the EU CSRD to California’s SB 253, Japan’s GX Basic Act, and Singapore’s revised carbon-tax system—are all built to integrate with the GHG Protocol’s next-generation standards, closing the loop of Disclosure → Verification → Decision.
Carbon accounting is no longer a note in the sustainability appendix; it has become the grammar of energy governance.
8. A Global Consensus: When Time Becomes a Carbon Metric
Beneath the technical language lies a profound global convergence:
Zero-emission claims are credible only when they align with physics.
From Google and Microsoft’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) programs,
to ENTSO-E’s Europe-wide hourly matching initiative,
to emerging REC 2.0 systems in Taiwan, Korea, and ASEAN—
every new experiment points toward the same principle: time and grid boundaries are the coordinates of climate truth.
Once embedded into global standards, this principle will redefine what counts as high-integrity carbon credit, genuine net-zero electricity, and energy transparency.
9. Conclusion: When Accounting Understands Time, It Understands Reality
What appears as a technical reform is, in essence, a philosophical awakening.
Carbon accounting has learned a simple yet revolutionary truth: emissions are not static—they occur in time.
A company that claims “zero emissions” must now prove that its renewable electricity existed at the moment of consumption, and that its actions genuinely reduced total grid emissions.
This is the moment when carbon accounting steps out of the spreadsheet and into the physical world.
From this point forward, time is no longer a reporting variable—it is the measure of integrity itself.
References
- GHG Protocol News Release: Public Consultation on Scope 2 and Power-Sector Consequential Methods (20 Oct 2025)
- Upcoming Scope 2 Public Consultation: Hourly Matching and Deliverability (GHG Protocol Blog, Oct 2025)
- GHG Protocol Standard Development and Revision Procedure (2023)
- Decision-Making Criteria and Governance Annex A (2022)
- ENTSO-E Position Paper on Hourly Matching (2024)
- The Brattle Group Report on Market-Based Method Credibility (2023)
(Based on official GHG Protocol releases and technical documentation, verified October 2025.)
