The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) is the most widely used international accounting tool for the government and business leaders to understand, quantify, and manage greenhouse gas emissions. The GHG Protocol, a decade-long partnership between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, is working with businesses, governments, and environmental groups around the worls to build a new genertion of credible and effective programs for tackling climate change.

It provides the accounting framework for nearly every GHG standard and program in the world - from the International Standards Orginization to The Climate Registry - as well as hundres of GHG inventories prepared by individual companies.

The GHG Protocol allows a diverse understanding of a company's emissions to be developed.

• Scope 1: All direct GHG emissions.
• Scope 2: Indirect GHG emissions from consumption of purchased electricity, heat or steam.
• Scope 3: Other indirect emissions, such as the extraction and production of purchased materials and fuels, transport-related activities in vehicles not owned or controlled by the reporting entity, electricity-related activities not covered in Scope 2, outsourced activities, waste disposal, etc.