Reporting pressure has changed what “good enough” means. Emissions data is no longer something companies prepare only for internal tracking or sustainability reports. It is increasingly a requirement of doing business. Large buyers are pushing emissions requests down their supply chains, lenders want climate risk context they can trust, and regulators are formalizing disclosure expectations.
That shift is already visible in the data. CDP reports that more than 45,000 suppliers were asked to disclose their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2025, and that number continues to grow as GHG reporting becomes embedded in procurement decisions. At the same time, new regulations are moving disclosure out of the voluntary space.
For many organizations, this pressure exposes a hard truth: they do not actually have a defensible greenhouse gas emissions inventory or carbon accounting methodology. Most of the pain is not in the math. It is in the messy middle: missing utility bills, unclear organizational boundaries, Scope 3 estimates with no backup, and spreadsheet processes that no one can repeat next year. Once that reported carbon footprint leaves your building, it becomes something other people will review, compare, and challenge.
What is Carbon Accounting?
The term “carbon accounting” is used constantly in conversations about GHG emissions reporting, but it is rarely precise. In practice, it has become shorthand for accounting for all greenhouse gas emissions, not just carbon dioxide. That distinction matters. A defensible emissions inventory must capture all relevant greenhouse gases to reflect real climate impact.
In the United States, roughly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from sources other than carbon dioxide, including methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Some of these gases have far higher warming impacts. Methane, for example, is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe. Excluding non-CO₂ gases can significantly understate emissions and increases the risk of misleading disclosures or greenwashing claims.
GHG Accounting vs. GHG Reporting
Developing a carbon footprint, meaning a full GHG emissions profile, involves two related but distinct steps: GHG accounting and GHG reporting.
GHG accounting is the process of building your emissions inventory. It includes a wide range of steps that ultimately calculate emissions across Scope 1, Scope 2, and relevant Scope 3 categories. As inventories grow more complex, many organizations rely on structured data systems or software to manage large datasets and ongoing supplier engagement to pull Scope 3 data.
GHG reporting comes next. It is the act of disclosing that inventory internally or externally, whether to customers, lenders, rating platforms, or the public. Once emissions data is reported, it becomes a formal claim that must be consistent, transparent, defensible—and increasingly, reduced.
What a Reportable Carbon Footprint Requires
In a reporting context, a carbon footprint is the total of your GHG emissions, typically expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). CO2e is a single unit which allows different greenhouse gases to be compared on a consistent basis.
To produce a reportable carbon footprint, it needs to be built with defined scopes, boundaries, and assumptions, then calculated using traceable data sources and documented methods. Ultimately, it will have:
1) Consistency: Year after year, you are using the same boundaries and methods unless you clearly disclose and justify a change.
2) Transparency: Someone else can follow your steps, understand your assumptions, and see where each number comes from.
3) Repeatability: If you rerun the same process with the same inputs, you get the same output. That sounds basic, but it is exactly what breaks when carbon footprint reporting is stitched together from one-off data pulls and undocumented judgment calls.
WherE GHG Emissions Inventories Commonly Break Down
Most emissions inventories fail for practical rather than technical reasons. Energy and fuel data is often incomplete or inconsistent, with missing utility bills, mixed tenant and landlord spaces, and fleet fuel tracked across multiple systems. When there is no clear source of truth, estimates creep in and confidence drops, which is why many teams move away from spreadsheet-only tracking as inventories grow.
At that stage, many organizations begin evaluating GHG reporting software to bring structure, version control, and audit-ready documentation into the process. The right tools can help centralize data, apply consistent emission factors, track methodological changes over time, and support repeatable calculations year after year—without replacing the need for sound scoping decisions and clear assumptions.
The second failure point is Scope 3, especially when it is treated like a simple exercise of converting spend data to CO2e. On average, Scope 3 emissions account for over 75% of a company’s total emissions. This is exactly why customers are pressing suppliers to know their numbers, to improve reporting, and to make reductions. Without clear scope 3 category understanding and traceable data sources, Scope 3 numbers are challenging to defend.
Finally, inventories break down when methods change without being tracked. Shifts in boundaries, emission factors, or financial-based scope 2 emissions can distort year-over-year trends if they are not clearly documented. Without ownership and process discipline, GHG reporting becomes a one-time exercise instead of a repeatable system.
When GHG Emissions Data Must Be Defended
A few years ago, GHG emissions reporting was often voluntary and driven by marketing. That has changed. Today, defensibility shows up in several places.
Customer ESG requests and scorecards are a big driver. Procurement teams want supplier emissions profiles because they are building their own Scope 3 inventories. More than 70% of S&P 500 firms report Scope 3 emissions data, and large multinationals are increasingly requiring suppliers to submit emissions data as part of the procurement process.
Investor and lender diligence is another pressure point. If climate risk affects access to capital, emissions data has to hold up in a higher-stakes conversation.
Public disclosures and third-party review also raise the bar. Even without a formal assurance engagement, your disclosures can be scrutinized by stakeholders who know what questions to ask.
And regulation is pushing emissions data toward more formal expectations. California’s SB 253 requires companies doing business in California above the revenue threshold to disclose Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. At the same time, California’s SB 261 requires climate-related financial risk reporting, which often relies on credible emissions data as an input. The same holds true for many in the CSRD value-chain with large European-based companies.
How Emerald Supports GHG REporting That Holds Up
This is exactly where Emerald helps: not just producing a number, but building the foundation behind it so your carbon footprint can be explained, repeated, and trusted. The focus is on creating a reporting approach that scales as customer requests, lender expectations, and regulatory requirements change.
Emerald Built Environments, a Crete United Company, supports clients through structured scoping and boundary setting, carbon accounting across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, and data collection approaches that reduce reliance on manual spreadsheets and ad hoc estimates. This structure matters because it allows organizations to clearly answer the questions that come with reporting pressure: where data came from, which emission factors were used, what assumptions were made, and what changed from prior years.
Emerald’s carbon footprint reporting solutions are designed to support both first-time reporters and companies responding to supplier requests or new disclosure rules. By building transparent calculations, clear documentation, and repeatable processes, Emerald helps emissions data stand up to scrutiny while also creating a stronger baseline for emissions reduction planning over time.
From Carbon Numbers to Credible Reporting
The goal is not a carbon footprint number that looks nice in a slide deck. The goal is emissions data that can be explained, repeated, and trusted, because that is what GHG reporting demands now.
An indefensible carbon footprint creates risk. One built for reporting builds confidence and becomes a base for real emissions-reduction planning.
If you want to move from “we tried to calculate it” to “we can stand behind it,” the next step is building a GHG emissions report designed for scrutiny.
